NEOWISE OBSERVATIONS OF NEAR-EARTH OBJECTS: PRELIMINARY RESULTS
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With the NEOWISE portion of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer ( WISE ) project, we have carried out a highly uniform survey of the near-Earth object (NEO) population at thermal infrared wavelengths ranging from 3 to 22 μm, allowing us to refine estimates of their numbers, sizes, and albedos. The NEOWISE survey detected NEOs the same way whether they were previously known or not, subject to the availability of ground-based follow-up observations, resulting in the discovery of more than 130 new NEOs. The survey's uniform sensitivity, observing cadence, and image quality have permitted extrapolation of the 428 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) detected by NEOWISE during the fully cryogenic portion of the WISE mission to the larger population. We find that there are 981 ± 19 NEAs larger than 1 km and 20,500 ± 3000 NEAs larger than 100 m. We show that the Spaceguard goal of detecting 90% of all 1 km NEAs has been met, and that the cumulative size distribution is best represented by a broken power law with a slope of 1.32 ± 0.14 below 1.5 km. This power-law slope produces ∼13, 200 ± 1900 NEAs with D > 140 m. Although previous studies predict another break in the cumulative size distribution below D ∼ 50–100 m, resulting in an increase in the number of NEOs in this size range and smaller, we did not detect enough objects to comment on this increase. The overall number for the NEA population between 100 and 1000 m is lower than previous estimates. The numbers of near-Earth comets and potentially hazardous NEOs will be the subject of future work.
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164207 has absolute magnitude 21.1 mag, albedo 0.219, and diameter 163 m.
“its absolute magnitude has a value of 21.1 mag and its albedo is 0.219 with a diameter of 163 m (Mainzer et al. 2011).”
From Asteroid 2014 OL339: yet another Earth quasi-satellite (2014) · cites this paper as Mainzer et al. 2011
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- Authors
- Mainzer, A., Grav, T., Bauer, J., Masiero, J., McMillan, R. S., Cutri, R. M., Walker, R., Wright, E., Eisenhardt, P., Tholen, D. J., Spahr, T., Jedicke, R., Denneau, L., DeBaun, E., Elsbury, D., Gautier, T., Gomillion, S., Hand, E., Mo, W., Watkins, J., Wilkins, A., Bryngelson, G. L., Del Pino Molina, A., Desai, S., Camus, M. G., Hidalgo, S. L., Konstantopoulos, I., Larsen, J. A., Maleszewski, C., Malkan, M. A., Mauduit, J.-C., Mullan, B. L., Olszewski, E. W., Pforr, J., Saro, A., Scotti, J. V., & Wasserman, L. H.
- Affiliations
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- University of Arizona (US)
- Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy (US)
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (US)
- Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (US)
- Dartmouth College (US)
- University of California, Santa Barbara (US)
- Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Daytona Beach Florida Campus (US)
- University of Missouri–Kansas City (US)
- University of Maryland, College Park (US)
- Clemson University (US)
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- Universidad Andrés Bello (CL)
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (ES)
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- United States Naval Academy (US)
- University of Portsmouth (GB)
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE)
- Lowell Observatory (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mainzer, A.
- ORCID
- Venue
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Publisher
- American Astronomical Society
- Published
- 2011-12-02
- Volume
- 743
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 156
- ISSN
- 0004-637X (ISSN-L)
- 1538-4357
- OpenAlex
- W2163755141
- Cited by
- 439
- References
- 52
- Citations by year
- 2026: 32 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 31 · 2023: 30 · 2022: 29 · 2021: 31 · 2020: 26 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 41 · 2017: 23 · 2016: 26 · 2015: 35 · 2014: 28 · 2013: 33 · 2012: 22
- FWCI
- 14.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- The Astrophysical Journal (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- ArTS Archivio della ricerca di Trieste (University of Trieste https://www.units.it/) (submittedVersion)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Smithsonian Institution
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Yale University
- California Institute of Technology
- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Harvard University
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- University of California, Los Angeles
- Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
- Planetary Science Division
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Astro and Planetary Science
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Aerospace Engineering › Space Satellite Systems and Control
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
- Keywords
- near-Earth objects, NEOWISE, WISE, asteroid size distribution, asteroid albedo, asteroid discovery, near-Earth asteroids, potentially hazardous asteroids, thermal infrared observations
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