Cosmic Pathfinders Program Activities

Modeling Asteroids and Using Microwave Telescope Data to Constrain Thermophysical Properties

Mariah Jones (Vassar College)

The South Pole Telescope (SPT), a millimeter-wave bolometer camera designed to measure the polarization of light left over from the early universe, happens to observe asteroids during its detection of the cosmic microwave background. Due to the long exposure of asteroids resulting from this detection method, the telescope can image multiple stages of the asteroids’ path. With access to these images, we want to determine whether this data is useful in constraining thermophysical properties of asteroids. We write an interface capable of loading in and modeling an asteroid shape model, which then determines the temperature distribution concerning the depth of the asteroid and uses this information to calculate the object’s flux. We then compare our modeled flux outputs to measured data from microwave telescopes to check the accuracy of our interface, and then determine a thermophysical property of (2) Pallas. Based on our plots of the measured flux divided by the modeled flux, we conclude that SPT data is very beneficial in constraining these properties. Furthermore, we gather that this asteroid has a higher thermal inertial value, correlating to increased thermal conductivity, density, and specific heat capacity of materials comprising (2) Pallas.

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