The Gaia Data Release 2 provides precise astrometry for nearly 1.5 billion sources across the entire sky, including several thousand asteroids. In this work, we provide evidence that reasonably large asteroids (diameter > 20 km) have high correlations with Gaia relative flux uncertainties and systematic right ascension errors. We further capture these correlations using a logistic Bayesian additive regression tree model. We compile a small list of probable large asteroids that can be targeted for direct diameter measurements and shape reconstruction.
@article{arxiv.2108.11814,
title = {Probabilistic modeling of asteroid diameters from Gaia DR2 errors},
author = {Rafael S. de Souza and Alberto Krone-Martins and Valerio Carruba and Rita de Cassia Domingos and Emille E. O. Ishida and Safwan Alijbaae and Mariela Huaman Espinoza and William Barletta},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.11814},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
3 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication at Research Notes of the AAS