A comprehensive characterization of the detection efficiency of nine of the major asteroid surveys that have been active over the past two decades is presented. The detection efficiency is estimated on a nightly basis by comparing the detected asteroids with the complete catalog of known asteroids propagated to the same observing epoch. Results include a nightly estimate of the detection efficiency curves as a function of apparent magnitude and apparent velocity of the asteroids, as well as a cumulative analysis to estimate the overall performance of each survey. The limiting magnitude distribution is estimated for each survey, and it is then modeled as a function of telescope aperture to obtain an estimate over a wide range of apertures.
@article{arxiv.1511.07659,
title = {Detection Efficiency of Asteroid Surveys},
author = {Pasquale Tricarico},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.07659},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal, 7 pages, 7 figures