Kavli Affiliate: C. L. Kuo
| First 5 Authors: P. M. Chichura, A. Foster, C. Patel, N. Ossa-Jaen, P. A. R. Ade
| Summary:
We present the first measurements of asteroids in millimeter wavelength (mm)
data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT), which is used primarily to study the
cosmic microwave background (CMB). We analyze maps of two $sim270$ deg$^2$ sky
regions near the ecliptic plane, each observed with the SPTpol camera $sim100$
times over one month. We subtract the mean of all maps of a given field,
removing static sky signal, and then average the mean-subtracted maps at known
asteroid locations. We detect three asteroids$text{ — }$(324) Bamberga, (13)
Egeria, and (22) Kalliope$text{ — }$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 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 flux density measurements of (324) Bamberga and (13)
Egeria roughly agree with predictions, while our measurements of (22) Kalliope
suggest lower flux, corresponding to effective emissivities of $0.66 pm 0.11$
at 2.0 mm and $<0.47$ at 3.2mm. We predict the asteroids detectable in other
SPT datasets and find good agreement with detections of (772) Tanete and (1093)
Freda in recent data from the SPT-3G camera, which has $sim10 times$ the
mapping speed of SPTpol. This work is the first focused analysis of asteroids
in data from CMB surveys, and it demonstrates we can repurpose historic and
future datasets for asteroid studies. Future SPT measurements can help
constrain the distribution of surface properties over a larger asteroid
population.
| Search Query: ArXiv Query: search_query=au:”C. L. Kuo”&id_list=&start=0&max_results=10