Photometric survey of 67 near-Earth objects
Journal
Date Issued
2018
Author(s)
•
•
•
•
•
Barucci, M. A.
•
•
•
Micheli, M.
•
Perozzi, E.
•
Lazzarin, M.
•
Bertini, I.
Description
This research has been funded with support from the Euro-pean Commission (grant agreement no. 640351 H2020- PROTEC-2014 - Accesstechnologies and characterization for Near Earth Objects (NEOs). SI also ac-knowledges financial support from ASI (contract No. 2013-046-R.0: “OSIRIS-REx Partecipazione Scientifica alla missione per la fase B2/C/D”). DP has re-ceived funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and inno-vation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions (grant agreement n.664931). We would also like to thank the anonymous referee for the insightfulcomments that helped improve the paper.
Abstract
Context. The near-Earth object (NEO) population is a window into the original conditions of the protosolar nebula, and has the potential to provide a key pathway for the delivery of water and organics to the early Earth. In addition to delivering the crucial ingredients for life, NEOs can pose a serious hazard to humanity since they can impact the Earth. To properly quantify the impact risk, physical properties of the NEO population need to be studied. Unfortunately, NEOs have a great variation in terms of mitigation-relevant quantities (size, albedo, composition, etc.) and less than 15% of them have been characterized to date.
Aims: There is an urgent need to undertake a comprehensive characterization of smaller NEOs (D < 300 m) given that there are many more of them than larger objects; their small sizes make them intrinsically fainter and therefore harder to study. One of the main aims of the NEOShield-2 project (2015-2017), financed by the European Community in the framework of the Horizon 2020 program, is therefore to retrieve physical properties of a wide number of NEOs in order to design impact mitigation missions and assess the consequences of an impact on Earth.
Methods: We carried out visible photometry of NEOs, making use of the DOLORES instrument at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG, La Palma, Spain) in order to derive visible color indexes and the taxonomic classification for each target in our sample.
Results: We attributed for the first time the taxonomical complex of 67 objects obtained during the first year of the project. While the majority of our sample belong to the S-complex, carbonaceous C-complex NEOs deserve particular attention. These NEOs can be located in orbits that are challenging from a mitigation point of view, with high inclination and low minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID). In addition, the lack of carbonaceous material we see in the small NEO population might not be due to an observational bias alone.
Aims: There is an urgent need to undertake a comprehensive characterization of smaller NEOs (D < 300 m) given that there are many more of them than larger objects; their small sizes make them intrinsically fainter and therefore harder to study. One of the main aims of the NEOShield-2 project (2015-2017), financed by the European Community in the framework of the Horizon 2020 program, is therefore to retrieve physical properties of a wide number of NEOs in order to design impact mitigation missions and assess the consequences of an impact on Earth.
Methods: We carried out visible photometry of NEOs, making use of the DOLORES instrument at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG, La Palma, Spain) in order to derive visible color indexes and the taxonomic classification for each target in our sample.
Results: We attributed for the first time the taxonomical complex of 67 objects obtained during the first year of the project. While the majority of our sample belong to the S-complex, carbonaceous C-complex NEOs deserve particular attention. These NEOs can be located in orbits that are challenging from a mitigation point of view, with high inclination and low minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID). In addition, the lack of carbonaceous material we see in the small NEO population might not be due to an observational bias alone.
Volume
615
Start page
A127
Issn Identifier
0004-6361
Ads BibCode
2018A&A...615A.127I
Rights
open.access
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
aa32154-17.pdf
Description
Pdf editoriale
Size
380.91 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
12d9aee49344162db63ad248c5420636