Preliminary Results from NEOWISE: An Enhancement to the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for Solar System Science
Abstract
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has surveyed the entire sky at four infrared wavelengths with greatly improved sensitivity and spatial resolution compared to its predecessors, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite and the Cosmic Background Explorer. NASA's Planetary Science Division has funded an enhancement to the WISE data processing system called "NEOWISE" that allows detection and archiving of moving objects found in the WISE data. NEOWISE has mined the WISE images for a wide array of small bodies in our solar system, including near-Earth objects (NEOs), Main Belt asteroids, comets, Trojans, and Centaurs. By the end of survey operations in 2011 February, NEOWISE identified over 157,000 asteroids, including more than 500 NEOs and ~120 comets. The NEOWISE data set will enable a panoply of new scientific investigations.
Additional Information
© 2011 American Astronomical Society. Received 2010 December 21; accepted 2011 February 9; published 2011 March 23. This publication makes use of data products from WISE, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This publication also makes use of data products from NEOWISE, which is a project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the Planetary Science Division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We gratefully acknowledge the extraordinary services specific to NEOWISE contributed by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, operated by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, operated by Harvard University. We appreciate the contributions of the referee, J. Emery, which greatly improved the manuscript. We also thank the worldwide community of dedicated amateur and professional astronomers devoted to minor planet follow-up observations. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We thank the Auton Lab of Carnegie Mellon University for use of their libraries, and the PanSTARRS project for MOPS.Attached Files
Published - Mainzer2011p13756Astrophys_J.pdf
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- Eprint ID
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- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20110509-110646418
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2011-05-09Created from EPrint's datestamp field
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
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- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)