Kiana McFadden (U. Arizona): "Determination of Physical Properties of Main Belt Asteroids Using WISE/NEOWISE Data"

As remnants of our solar system’s formation, asteroids provide valuable clues to its early history and evolution. By studying their present-day physical properties, we can gain a better understanding of the processes that shaped the asteroid population (e.g., Botke et al., 2005; Holsapple et al., 2022). Using infrared observations from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE; wavelength channels, 3.4,4.6, 12, and 22 um) mission and its extension, the Near-Earth Object WISE (NEOWISE; wavelength channels -3.4 and 4.6 um) mission, we modeled the thermal properties of 138, 517 main-belt asteroids with our modified version of the Near-Earth Asteroid Thermal Model (NEATM; Harris 1998). In this talk, I will present updated diameter and albedo measurements for the main-belt population and discuss their implications for models of planetary formation and solar system evolution.