Seminar
Near-Infrared colors of minor planets recovered from VISTA - VHS survey

Abstract

More than 600 000 small objects of the Solar System (SoSS) are currently known. The physical characterization exists only for a small fraction of them. Their understanding is important both for scientific and practical point of view: SoSS can offer important clues regarding the origins and the evolution of the Solar System, and they are the key objects for the development of the Solar System exploration.

I will present the near-infrared spectrophotometric data of more than 35 000 SoSS imaged by VISTA-survey. First, the pipeline used for obtaining the observations from the survey catalogs will be described. Second, the statistics derived from the resulted measurements and their impact in the compositional map of SoSS is shown.

Additional techniques were employed over this large set of values, such as comparing color variation with the taxonomic classification and combining the near infrared spectrophotometric data with complementary measurements (albedo, spectral data). The results significantly improve the image of the physical properties of SoSS.