Thermophysical Modeling of 1,809 WISE-observed Asteroids

The presence of the Yarkovsky effect has significant implications for the orbital evolution of asteroids, but it is difficult to detect directly. Though Yarkovsky acceleration can significantly perturb the orbits of sub-kilometer asteroids, its magnitude is unknown for the vast majority of asteroids. Using thermophysical modeling (TPM), we seek to constrain parameters directly related to the Yarkovsky effect such as thermal inertia. We use thermal infrared flux measurements obtained by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) during its fully cryogenic phase. Our shape models and spin information were drawn from the Database of Asteroid Models from Inversion Techniques (DAMIT). We identified a total of 1,891 asteroids with both sufficient WISE data and an available shape model to apply the TPM to. We combined WISE photometry with the existing DAMIT lightcurves to successfully derive through lightcurve inversion new shape models for 641 of these asteroids. After making a cut on the TPM fits’ chi-square, we present a sample of 1,690 asteroids with TPM fits deriving thermal inertia, diameter, and Bond albedo. Among these, we have identified 217 promising candidates for Yarkovksy observational follow-up.