Analysis of Four-band WISE Observations of Asteroids

Abstract We analyzed 82,548 carefully curated observations of 4420 asteroids with Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) four-band data to produce estimates diameters and infrared emissivities. also used these diameter values in conjunction absolute visual magnitudes infer visible-band geometric albedos. provide solutions 131 not by the NEOWISE team 1778 team. Our process differs from analysis that it uses an accurate solar flux, integrates flux actual bandpass responses, obeys Kirchhoff’s law, does force emissivity all four bands arbitrary value 0.9. a regularized model-fitting algorithm yields improved fits data. results more closely match stellar-occultation than factor ∼2. Using 24 high-quality as benchmark, we found median error four-infrared-band set is 9.3%. suggest presence size-dependent bias estimates, which may pollute asteroid size distributions slightly inflate impact-hazard risk calculations. For 90% this sample, primary source on albedo estimate magnitude.