Color Variability of Asteroids in SDSS Moving Object Catalog
نویسندگان
چکیده
We report a detection of statistically significant color variations for a sample of 7,531 multiply observed asteroids that are listed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Moving Object Catalog. Using 5-band photometric observations accurate to ∼0.02 mag, we detect color variations in the range 0.06-0.11 mag (rms). These variations appear uncorrelated with asteroids physical characteristics such as diameter (in the probed 1-10 km range), taxonomic class, and family membership. Despite such a lack of correlation, which implies a random nature for the cause of color variability, a suite of tests suggest that the detected variations are not instrumental effects. In particular, the observed color variations are incompatible with photometric errors, and, for objects observed at least four times, the color change in the first pair of observations is correlated with the color change in the second pair. These facts strongly suggest that the observed effect is real, and also indicate that for some asteroids color variations are larger than for others. The detected color variations can be explained as due to inhomogeneous albedo distribution over an asteroid surface. Although relatively small, these variations suggest that fairly large patches with different color than their surroundings exist on a significant fraction of asteroids. This conclusion is in agreement with spatially resolved color images of several large asteroids obtained by NEAR spacecraft and HST.
منابع مشابه
Asteroids Observed by The Sloan Digital Sky Survey
We announce the first public release of the SDSS Moving Object Catalog, with SDSS observations for 58,117 asteroids. The catalog lists astrometric and photometric data for moving objects observed prior to Dec 15, 2001, and also includes orbital elements for 10,592 previously known objects. We analyze the correlation between the orbital parameters and optical colors for the known objects, and co...
متن کاملJovian Trojan Asteroids in Sdss Moc 3 1 the Properties of Jovian Trojan Asteroids Listed in Sdss Moving Object Catalog 3
We analyze 1187 observations of about 860 unique candidate Jovian Trojan asteroids listed in the 3rd release of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Moving Object Catalog. The sample is complete at the faint end to r = 21.2 mag (apparent brightness) and H = 13.8 (absolute brightness, approximately corresponding to 10 km diameter). A subset of 297 detections of previously known Trojans were used to d...
متن کاملArtificial Neural Network Classification of Asteroids
There are currently only a few thousand asteroids with known classifications. Our aim is to increase this number to over 20,000 by classifying asteroids identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Suvey (SDSS) Moving Object Catalogue using an artificial neural network that has been developed using the Neural Network Toolbox in Matlab. With this neural network, we are able to provide classifications for...
متن کاملPreparing for Advanced Ligo: a Star–galaxy Separation Catalog for the Palomar Transient Factory
The search for fast optical transients, such as the expected electromagnetic counterparts to binary neutron star mergers, is riddled with false positives (FPs) ranging from asteroids to stellar flares. While moving objects are readily rejected via image pairs separated by ∼1 hr, stellar flares represent a challenging foreground, significantly outnumbering rapidly evolving explosions. Identifyin...
متن کامل