J/A+A/705/A189 Asteroid masses obtained in INPOP25c (Mariani+, 2026)
Boosting decision trees for the selection of main belt asteroid in planetary
ephemerides: An alternative model.
Mariani V., Fienga A., Murray Z., Gastineau M., Laskar J.
<Astron. Astrophys. 705, A189 (2026)>
=2026A&A...705A.189M 2026A&A...705A.189M (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Solar system ; Minor planets ; Models
Keywords: celestial mechanics - ephemerides - minor planets, asteroids: general
Abstract:
One of the main bottleneck in assessing the accuracy of Mars orbit is
the unknown value of the asteroids in the Main Asteroid Belt. Nowadays
a modeling with 343 asteroids as point masses is used, with the
relative masses fitted to observational data.
In the current work we propose an innovative methodology to reduce the
number of asteroids implemented as point masses, thus reducing the
number of parameters to be fitted, without a significant degradation
of the postfit residuals. We use boosting decision trees to get a
ranking by relative importance of the 343 asteroids of the current
Main Belt modeling.
We have been able to remove more than 100 of them without
significantly degrading the postfit residuals and with a significant
improvement of the uncertainties. Furthermore, we verified that the
postfit masses found with the new modeling (INPOP25c) are consistent
with respect to mass estimation found with an independent approach by
means of albedo properties of the asteroids.
Description:
We present here the results of the analysis carried out in this paper
using Boosted Decision Trees.
The file tablea1.dat provides the list of the asteroid masses obtained
in INPOP25c.
In the first, second and third column we show respectively the postfit
mass, 1sigma uncertainty and noise-to-signal ratio found with INPOP25c
adjustment to observations. In the fourth and fifth column we present
respectively the mean and standard deviation of the Wasserstein
barycenters obtained. The last column indicates the ranking position
of each asteroid.
The file tablea2.dat contains the ranking positions of the 343
asteroids modeled as point masses in INPOP21a: the first column gives
the ranking position, and the second column lists the MPC number of
each asteroid.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ReadMe 80 . This file
tablea1.dat 59 196 Postfit masses, sigmas, ranking position and
Wasserstein barycenters for asteroids in INPOP25c
tablea2.dat 8 343 Ranking for the full list of 343 asteroids
of INPOP21a
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See also:
B/astorb : Orbits of Minor Planets (Bowell+, 2014-)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: tablea1.dat
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 5 I5 --- MPC MPC number to identify the asteroid
(MPC_num)
7- 15 E9.3 kg massINPOP25c Postfit mass INPOP25c (mass_INPOP25c)
17- 25 E9.3 kg sigmaINPOP25c Postfit sigma INPOP25c (sigma_INPOP25c)
27- 35 F9.7 --- sigmratio Sigma over mass ratio (postfit) INPOP25c
(sigmratio)
37- 45 E9.3 kg meanWass Mean of the Wasserstein barycenter
(mean_Wass)
47- 55 E9.3 kg sigmaWass Sigma of the Wasserstein barycenter
(sigma_Wass)
57- 59 I3 --- Ranking Position in the ranking (Ranking)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Byte-by-byte Description of file: tablea2.dat
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 3 I3 --- Ranking Position, in the ranking obtained,
for the asteroid (Ranking)
5- 8 I4 --- MPC MPC number to identify the asteroid (MPC_num)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Acknowledgements:
Vincenzo Mariani, vmariani(at)geoazur.unice.fr
(End) Patricia Vannier [CDS] 07-Nov-2025