Asteroid Lightcurves and Detection, Shape, and Size Biases in Large-scale Surveys

Abstract

Abstract Most asteroids are somewhat elongated and have non-zero lightcurve amplitudes. Such asteroids can be detected in large-scale sky surveys even if their mean magnitudes are fainter than the stated sensitivity limits. We explore the detection of elongated asteroids under a set of idealized but useful approximations. We find that objects up to 1 mag fainter than a survey’s sensitivity limit are likely to be detected, and that the effect is most pronounced for asteroids with lightcurve amplitudes 0.1–0.4 mag. This imposes a bias on the derived size and shape distributions of the population that must be properly accounted for.