Asteroid Trails in Hubble Space TelescopeWFPC2 Images: First Results

Evans, R. W.; Stapelfeldt, K.; Peters, D.; Trauger, John T.; Padgett, Deborah; Ballester, G. E.; Burrows, Christopher J.; Clarke, J. T.; Crisp, David; Gallagher, J.; Griffiths, R. E.; Grillmair, Carl J.; Hester, J. J.; Hoessel, John G.; Holtzmann, J.; Krist, John; McMaster, Matthew; Meadows, V. S.; Mould, Jeremy; Ostrander, Eric J.; Sahai, Raghvendra; Scowen, Paul A.; Watson, A. M.; Westphal, James A.

doi:10.1006/icar.1997.5873

Cited by 18 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 9 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…A survey of a relatively small field (15 0 square) by the Infrared Space Observatory at 12 m saw 20 sources and deduced a shallow slope for smaller asteroids as well, in this case b ¼ 1:5 (Tedesco & Desert 2002). A study of asteroid sizes performed with archived frames from the Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 taken from 1994 to 1996 revealed 96 moving objects with apparent magnitudes down to 24, or with diameters of 0.3Y3 km (Evans et al 1998). This work found a slope of 1.2Y1.3, even shallower than that found by previous investigators.…”

Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for a Color Dependence in the Size Distribution of Main-Belt Asteroids

et al. 2007

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We present the results of a project to detect small ($1 km) main-belt asteroids with the 3.6 m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. We observed in two filters (MegaPrime g 0 and r 0 ) in order to compare the results in each band. Owing to the observational cadence we did not observe the same asteroids through each filter and thus do not have true color information. However, strong differences in the size distributions as seen in the two filters point to a color dependence at these sizes, perhaps to be expected in this regime, in which asteroid cohesiveness begins to be dominated by physical strength and composition rather than by gravity. The best-fit slopes of the cumulative size distributions (CSDs) in both filters tend toward lower values for smaller asteroids, consistent with the results of previous studies. In addition to this trend, the size distributions seen in the two filters are distinctly different, with steeper slopes in r 0 than in g 0 . Breaking our sample up according to semimajor axis, the difference between the filters in the inner belt is found to be somewhat less pronounced than in the middle and outer belt, but the CSD of those asteroids seen in the r 0 filter is consistently and significantly steeper than in g 0 throughout. The CSD slopes also show variations with semimajor axis within a given filter, particularly in r 0 . We conclude that the size distribution of main-belt asteroids is likely to be color-dependent at kilometer sizes and that this dependence may vary across the belt.

show abstract

Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for a Color Dependence in the Size Distribution of Main-Belt Asteroids

et al. 2007

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These aspects are of significant impact in a better tracking of the trails, lowering the limit of detectable objects; and increasing the probability of serendipitous capture of MOs within the WFC/ACS field of view. Extrapolating from the Evans et al (1998) results, one finds that, on average, one in every thirty ACS deep exposures may unveil the trail of a new faint MO.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Thus, a comparison of the observed trail with the simulated ones, enables a distance determination of the detected MOs. This method has been illustrated in the work of Evans et al (1998), which presented trails of 96 MOs, detected on 28,460 WFPC2 deep HST images. Most of these MOs are too faint to have been detected in ground-based observations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trails of solar system minor bodies on WFC/ACS images

2004

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper we analyse very short arcs of minor bodies of the Solar System detected on Hubble Space Telescope (HST ) Wide Field Channel ACS images. In particular, we address how to constrain the Keplerian orbital elements for minor body detections, illustrating the method for 2 objects. One of the minor bodies left 13 successive trails, making it the most well-sampled object yet identified in the HST archive. Most interestingly, we also address the problem of ephemeris prediction and show that in the particular case of HST very short arcs the confinement window for subsequent recovery is significantly reduced to a narrow linear region, that would facilitate successive observations. Subject headings: Minor planets, 96.30.Y

show abstract

“…The population of small asteroids is almost completely uncharacterized, but is critical for understanding the parent population of the Earth-crossing asteroids (Evans et al 1998). SIRTF will be sensitive to thermal emission at 8 and 24µm from main belt asteroids as small as 1 km.…”

Section: Small Asteroidsmentioning

confidence: 99%