Asteroids in the Thermal Infrared

Abstract

The importance of the thermal-infrared spectral region for investigations of asteroids lies traditionally in the dependence of the thermal emission of an asteroid on its visual albedo and size. Knowledge of albedos and sizes is crucial in many areas of asteroid research, such as mineralogy and taxonomy, the size-frequency distribution of families and populations of asteroids (e.g., near-Earth asteroids), and the relationship between asteroids in the outer solar system and comets. However, the rapid increase in the availability of computing power over the past decade has cleared the way for the development of sophisticated thermophysical models of asteroids with interesting new areas of application. Recent progress in the thermal modeling of asteroids and observational work in the thermal infrared are described. The use of thermal models for the physical characterization of asteroids and other applications is discussed.