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Title:
WISE Solar System Science
Authors:
McMillan, Robert S.; WISE Team
Affiliation:
AA(Univ. of Arizona), AB()
Publication:
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #214, #217.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.724
Publication Date:
05/2009
Origin:
AAS
Bibliographic Code:
2009AAS...21421702M

Abstract

WISE will survey the solar system to unprecedented sensitivity and resolution in its wavelength bands. Corresponding to the peak of thermal emission of many solar system bodies and particles, the 12 and 23 micron bands will detect asteroids, comets, comet debris trails, and zodiacal dust to several AU from the sun. Some of the objects and material will be too dark to have been detected by visible-light surveys, and previous infrared telescopes in space have either not covered the whole sky or have had far less sensitivity. As a consequence, WISE will explore the spatial distributions and thermal properties of the objects and material populating the inner solar system efficiently and without bias favoring bright albedos.

At the temperatures dominant in the inner solar system, IR flux is more directly related to the size of the emitter than is visible flux, so the detections of asteroids by WISE will be closer to a diameter-limited census. Yet combined with visual magnitudes, WISE data can yield albedos.

Orbital migration driven by thermal reradiation of absorbed sunlight depends on size and albedo, and affects the evolution of the orbits of asteroids. The distributions of sizes of asteroids, and the dependences of those distributions with orbital parameters to be uncovered by WISE will therefore be evidence of the processes that brought the solar system to its current arrangement.

Dark asteroids that approach Earth are especially menacing if they have evaded detection by ground-based surveys, so WISE will refine knowledge of the impact hazard.

WISE data will help the study of the formation of cometary comae, tails, and dust trails, and the rate of mass loss from comets. Finally, the zodiacal dust bands, being the asteroidal component of the zodiacal dust, hold the key to determining the magnitude of the asteroid component.

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