Article

Asteroid Measurements at Millimeter Wavelengths with the South Pole Telescope

Public Deposited
https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/articles/qz20sv46m
Abstract
  • We present the rst measurements of asteroids in millimeter wavelength data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT), which is used primarily to study the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We analyze maps of two∼270 deg2 sky regions near the ecliptic plane, each observed with the SPTpol camera∼100 times over 1 month. We subtract the mean of all maps of a given eld, removing static sky signal, and then average the mean subtracted maps at known asteroid locations. We detect three asteroids—(324) Bamberga, (13) Egeria, and (22) Kalliope—with signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) of 11.2, 10.4, and 6.1, respectively, at 2.0 mm (150 GHz); we also detect (324) Bamberga with an S/N of 4.1 at 3.2 mm (95 GHz). We place constraints on these asteroids’ effective emissivities, brightness temperatures, and light-curve modulation amplitude. Our ux density measurements of (324) Bamberga and (13) Egeria roughly agree with predictions, while our measurements of (22) Kalliope suggest lower ux, corresponding to effective emissivities of 0.64 ± 0.11 at 2.0 and < 0.47 at 3.2 mm. We predict the asteroids detectable in other SPT data sets and nd good agreement with detections of (772) Tanete and (1093) Freda in recent data from the SPT-3G camera, which has∼10× the mapping speed of SPTpol. This work is the rst focused analysis of asteroids in data from CMB surveys, and it demonstrates we can repurpose historic and future data sets for asteroid studies. Future SPT measurements can help constrain the distribution of surface properties over a larger asteroid population.

Creator
Date Issued
  • 2022
Academic Affiliation
Journal Title
Journal Issue/Number
  • 2
Journal Volume
  • 936
Last Modified
  • 2025-03-03
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Rights Statement
License
DOI
ISSN
  • 1538-4357
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