TY - JOUR
T1 - SAFARI
T2 - Searching asteroids for activity revealing indicators
AU - Chandler, Colin Orion
AU - Curtis, Anthony M.
AU - Mommert, Michael
AU - Sheppard, Scott S.
AU - Trujillo, Chadwick A.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific. All rights reserved.
PY - 2018/11
Y1 - 2018/11
N2 - Active asteroids behave dynamically like asteroids but display comet-like comae. These objects are poorly understood, with only about 30 identified to date. We have conducted one of the deepest systematic searches for asteroid activity by making use of deep images from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) ideally suited to the task. We looked for activity indicators among 11,703 unique asteroids extracted from 35,640 images. We detected three previously identified active asteroids ((62412), (1) Ceres and (779) Nina), though only (62412) showed signs of activity. Our activity occurrence rate of 1 in 11,703 is consistent with the prevailing 1 in 10,000 activity occurrence rate estimate. Our proof of concept demonstrates (1) our novel informatics approach can locate active asteroids and (2) DECam data are well-suited to the search for active asteroids.
AB - Active asteroids behave dynamically like asteroids but display comet-like comae. These objects are poorly understood, with only about 30 identified to date. We have conducted one of the deepest systematic searches for asteroid activity by making use of deep images from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) ideally suited to the task. We looked for activity indicators among 11,703 unique asteroids extracted from 35,640 images. We detected three previously identified active asteroids ((62412), (1) Ceres and (779) Nina), though only (62412) showed signs of activity. Our activity occurrence rate of 1 in 11,703 is consistent with the prevailing 1 in 10,000 activity occurrence rate estimate. Our proof of concept demonstrates (1) our novel informatics approach can locate active asteroids and (2) DECam data are well-suited to the search for active asteroids.
KW - Asteroids: General – Techniques: image processing
KW - Methods: Analytical – Minor planets
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U2 - 10.1088/1538-3873/aad03d
DO - 10.1088/1538-3873/aad03d
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85055494005
SN - 0004-6280
VL - 130
JO - Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
JF - Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
IS - 993
M1 - 114501
ER -