J/A+A/673/A93 Properties of near-Earth objects (Saifollahi+, 2023)
Mining archival data from wide-field astronomical surveys in search of
near-Earth objects.
Saifollahi T., Verdoes Kleijn G., Williams R., Micheli M., Santana-Ros T.,
Helmich E., Koschny D., Conversi L.
<Astron. Astrophys. 673, A93 (2023)>
=2023A&A...673A..93S 2023A&A...673A..93S (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Solar system ; Minor planets ; Positional data ; Photometry, SDSS
Keywords: minor planets - asteroids: general - astrometry -
astronomical databases: miscellaneous - techniques: photometric -
methods: observational - methods: data analysis
Abstract:
Increasing our knowledge of the orbits and compositions of Near-Earth
Objects (NEOs) is important for a better understanding of the
evolution of the Solar System and of life. The detection of
serendipitous NEO appearances among the millions of archived exposures
from large astronomical imaging surveys can provide a contribution
which is complementary to NEO surveys. Using the AstroWISE information
system, this work aims to assess the detectability rate, the achieved
recovery rate and the quality of astrometry when data mining the ESO
archive for the OmegaCAM wide-field imager at the VST. We developed an
automatic pipeline that searches for the NEO appearances inside the
AstroWISE environment. Throughout the recovery process, the pipeline
uses several public web-tools to identify possible images that overlap
with the position of NEOs, and acquires information on the NEOs
predicted position and other properties (e.g., magnitude, rate and
direction of motion) at the time of observations. We have recovered
196 appearances of NEOs from a set of 968 appearances predicted to be
recoverable. It includes appearances for three NEOs which were on the
impact risk list at that point. These appearances were well before
their discovery. The subsequent risk assessment using the extracted
astrometry removes these NEOs from the risk list. We estimate a
detectability rate of 0.05 per NEO at an SNR>3 for NEOs in the
OmegaCAM archive. Our automatic recovery rates are 40% and 20% for
NEOs on the risk list and the full list, respectively. The achieved
astrometric and photometric accuracy is on average 0.12 arcsec and 0.1
mag. These results show the high potential of the archival imaging
data of the ground-based wide-field surveys as useful instruments for
the search, (p)recovery and characterization of NEOs. Highly automated
approaches, as possible using AstroWISE, make this undertaking
feasible.
Description:
Here we provide the astrometric and photometric properties of the NEO
recoveries and precoveries, for the risk-list and full-list of NEOs
(two separate tables). For more information, contact the authors or
visit https://www.astro.rug.nl/~neo/
File Summary:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ReadMe 80 . This file
fulllist.dat 363 196 Precovery omegacam full list
risklist.dat 364 49 Precovery omegacam risk list
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
See also:
https://www.astro.rug.nl/~neo : Kapteyn's Near-Earth Object Data Archive
Byte-by-byte Description of file:fulllist.dat
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 9 A9 --- Name Name of the NEO
11- 20 A10 "date" Date Date of observation
22- 28 A7 --- Time Time of observation in UT (h-mm-ss)
30- 49 F20.16 deg RAdeg Observed right ascension of the NEO at the
date and time of observation
51- 71 F21.17 deg DEdeg Observed declination of the NEO at the
date and time of observation
73- 91 F19.16 arcsec length Observed apparent length of the streak
93-112 F20.16 deg angle Observed angle of motion of the streak
114-132 F19.17 arcsec sigma Observed width of the streak
134-151 F18.15 mag mag Observed apparent magnitude of the streak
153-171 F19.16 --- snr Observed signal-to-noise ratio of the streak
173-190 F18.16 arcsec seeing Seeing during the observation
192-207 A16 --- Inst Telescope/Instrument
209-219 A11 --- Filter Filter during the observation
221-225 F5.1 s ExpTime Exposure time of the observation
227-245 F19.15 deg predRA Predicted right ascension of the NEO at the
date and time of observation
247-267 F21.17 deg predDE Predicted declination of the NEO at the
date and time of observation
269-276 F8.3 arcsec preda Semi-major axis of the uncertainty
(1-sigma) ellipse in position
278-285 F8.3 arcsec predb Semi-minor axis of the uncertainty
(1-sigma) ellipse in position
287-305 F19.16 arcsec predlength Predicted apparent length of the streak
307-324 F18.14 deg predangle Predicted angle of motion of the streak
326-343 F18.15 mag predmag Predicted apparent magnitude of the streak
345-363 F19.16 --- predsnr Predicted signal-to-noise ratio of the streak
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Byte-by-byte Description of file: risklist.dat
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 8 A8 --- Name Name of the NEO
10- 19 A10 "date" Date Date of observation
21- 27 A7 --- Time Time of observation in UT (h-mm-ss)
29- 46 F18.14 deg RAdeg Observed right ascension of the NEO at the
date and time of observation
48- 68 F21.17 deg DEdeg Observed declination of the NEO at the
date and time of observation
70- 87 F18.16 arcsec length ?=- Observed apparent length of the streak
89-107 F19.15 deg angle ?=- Observed angle of motion of the streak
109-127 F19.17 arcsec sigma ?=- Observed width of the streak
129-146 F18.15 mag mag ?=- Observed apparent magnitude of the streak
148-166 F19.15 --- snr ?=- Observed signal-to-noise ratio of
the streak
168-186 F19.17 arcsec seeing Seeing during the observation
188-203 A16 --- Inst Telescope/Instrument
205-215 A11 --- Filter Filter during the observation
217-221 F5.1 s ExpTime Exposure time of the observation
223-240 F18.14 deg predRA Predicted right ascension of the NEO at the
date and time of observation
242-261 F20.16 deg predDE Predicted declination of the NEO at the
date and time of observation
263-275 F13.8 arcsec preda Semi-major axis of the uncertainty
(1-sigma) ellipse in position
277-286 F10.8 arcsec predb Semi-minor axis of the uncertainty
(1-sigma) ellipse in position
288-306 F19.17 arcsec predlength Predicted apparent length of the streak
308-325 F18.14 deg predangle Predicted angle of motion of the streak
327-344 F18.15 mag predmag Predicted apparent magnitude of the streak
346-364 F19.15 --- predsnr Predicted signal-to-noise ratio of the streak
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Acknowledgements:
Teymoor Saifollahi, teymur.saif(at)gmail.com
(End) Patricia Vannier [CDS] 09-Mar-2023