Interesting results, released in April 2011 / Spring 2012, produced by WISE probe, on the search for an outer planet (annual conference held in 2011 at EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 02-07 October 2011, Nantes, France). The NEOWISE Project: Recent Results. A. Mainzer, T. Grav, J. Masiero, J. Bauer, R. Cutri, R. S. McMillan, E. Wright, T. Spahr. Abstract: The NEOWISE enhancement to the Wide-field Infrared Explorer (WISE) mission has resulted in detections of more than 157,000 minor planets in thermal infrared wavelength, representing an increase in the number of objects observed of nearly two orders of magnitude over the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). The survey encompasses near-Earth objects, comets, main belt asteroids, Hildas, Trojans, Centaurs and scattered-disk objects. We will summarize the scientific results of the survey to date, focusing on the combination of available visible and nearinfrared ancillary data with NEOWISE as well as studies of near-Earth objects. 1. Introduction The WISE mission is a NASA medium-class Explorer telescope designed to survey the entire sky in four infrared wavelengths: 3.4, 4.6, 12 and 22 μm (denoted W1, W2, W3 and W4 respectively). [3] While the primary scientific goals of the WISE mission were to find nearby cool stars and ultraluminous infrared galaxies, the NEOWISE project was funded by NASA’s Planetary Sciences Division to facilitate solar system studies [4]. The goals of NEOWISE were two-fold: first, to archive and serve to the public all of the single exposures collected by the WISE spacecraft, along with a query tool for solar system objects; and second, to mine the WISE data stream for moving objects in real time through the creation of the WISE Moving Object Processing System (WMOPS).With WMOPS, we were able to carry out a “blind search for minor planets regardless of whether or not they were previously known. This has largely freed the survey from many of the biases against low albedo objects inherent in visible light surveys. We can use these data to carry out population studies of asteroids throughout the solar system, allowing us to more accurately characterize their numbers, sizes, and albedos. We will describe recent work on population modeling with the NEOWISE dataset, with an emphasis on the near-Earth objects (NEOs). NEOWISE detected hundreds of NEOs during the fully cryogenic portion of the WISE mission, resulting in a highly uniformly sampled population that lends itself to debiased statistical studies. Furthermore, combining the NEOWISE thermal infrared dataset with other ancillary sources of visible and near-infrared photometry and spectroscopy has allowed comparison of albedos to taxonomic classifications. Paper link: meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC-DPS2011/EPSC-DPS2011-1530.pdf --------------------------------------------------------- Searching for Outer Planet Debris Disks/Rings with WISE. M.F. Skrutskie, F. Masci, J. Fowler, R.M. Cutri, A. Verbiscer, E.L. Wright. Abstract: The NASA Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) imaged the entire celestial sphere at 3.4, 4.6, 12, and 22m during its 9 month cryogenic survey mission with typical 5-sigma sensitivity for point source detection near the ecliptic of 0.08, 0.11, 1, and 6 mJy (Wright et al. 2010). In addition to the detection of hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies as well as a vast number of known and new asteroids (Mainzer et al. 2011), WISE was sensitive to extended emission from warm dust in the Solar System, for example from zodiacal dust bands and comet debris trails. WISE also scanned all of the superior planets during its mission, encountering them serendipitously during normal Survey operations. This paper presents the result of searches for dust emission originating from irregular satellite impact debris or activity around Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, primarily in the longest wavelength band at 22m. WISE delivered angular resolution of 6 arcseconds in the three shorterwavelength bands and 12 arcseconds in the band most suited for outer Solar System dust detection at 22m. Jupiter and Saturn heavily saturate the detectors and scattered light limits the inner radius for analysis. Since WISE acquired its observations over many days, and in some cases weeks, we have constructed deep coadds in the frame of the moving planet rather than using standard WISE Atlas Image Coadds. WISE typically dedicated about 70 sec of observation to each point on the sky near the ecliptic plane, so WISE observations are not nearly as sensitive as those possible with the Spitzer Space Telescope during its cryogenic mission. All of the giant planets were located in a region of the sky scanned in the second half of WISEs all-sky coverage. As a result none of these fields was included in the 57% of the sky covered in the April 2011 WISE Preliminary Data Release. At the time of the WISE Final Data Release, planned for Spring 2012, the individual calibrated “Level 1” frames contributing to these observations will become available through the Infrared Science Archive (IRSA). The release of these calibrated single frames was made possible by NASA support for the NEOWISE project (Mainzer et al. 2011). Paper link: meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC-DPS2011/EPSC-DPS2011-1665.pdf ----------------------------------------------- The two papers are present in the conference program EPSC / 2011, at the end of the page, in this link, good reading: meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC-DPS2011/oral_program/8405
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:05:50 +0000
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