English

A revised asteroid polarization-albedo relationship using WISE/NEOWISE data

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2015-06-04 v1

Abstract

We present a reanalysis of the relationship between asteroid albedo and polarization properties using the albedos derived from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. We find that the function that best describes this relation is a three-dimensional linear fit in the space of log(albedo)-log(polarization slope)-log(minimum polarization). When projected to two dimensions the parameters of the fit are consistent with those found in previous work. We also define p* as the quantity of maximal polarization variation when compared with albedo and present the best fitting albedo-p* relation. Some asteroid taxonomic types stand out in this three-dimensional space, notably the E, B, and M Tholen types, while others cluster in clumps coincident with the S- and C-complex bodies. We note that both low albedo and small (D<30 km) asteroids are under-represented in the polarimetric sample, and we encourage future polarimetric surveys to focus on these bodies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1202.2379,
  title  = {A revised asteroid polarization-albedo relationship using WISE/NEOWISE data},
  author = {Joseph R. Masiero and A. K. Mainzer and T. Grav and J. M. Bauer and E. L. Wright and R. S. McMillan and D. J. Tholen and A. W. Blain},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1202.2379},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

16 pages, Accepted to ApJ

R2 v1 2026-06-21T20:17:54.883Z