Visual-band Brightnesses of Near-Earth Objects that will be Discovered in the Infrared by NEO Surveyor

Abstract

Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor will detect asteroids and comets using mid-infrared thermal emission, however ground-based followup resources will require knowledge of the expected visible light brightness in order to plan characterization observations. Here we describe the range of visual-to-infrared colors that the NEOs detected by Surveyor will span, and demonstrate that for objects that have no previously reported Visual band observations, estimates of the Johnson Visual-band brightness based on infrared flux alone will have significant uncertainty. Incidental or targeted photometric followup of objects discovered by Surveyor enables predictions of the fraction of reflected light visible and near-infrared wavelengths, supporting additional detailed characterization.

Keywords

• Asteroids
• Albedo
• Near-Earth objects
• Surveys