Small Bodies: Near and Far Database for thermal infrared observations of small bodies in the Solar System

Abstract

In this paper, we present the Small Bodies: Near and Far Infrared Database, an easy-to-use tool intended to facilitate the modelling of thermal emission of small bodies of the Solar System. Our database collects measurements of thermal emissions for small Solar System targets that are otherwise available in scattered sources and provides a complete description of the data, including all information necessary to perform direct scientific analyses and without the need to access additional external resources. This public database contains representative data of asteroid observations of large surveys (e.g. AKARI, IRAS, and WISE) as well as a collection of small body observations of infrared space telescopes (e.g. the Herschel Space Observatory) and provides a web interface to access this data. We also provide an example for the direct application of the database and show how it can be used to estimate the thermal inertia of specific populations, e.g. asteroids within a given size range. We show how different scalings of thermal inertia with heliocentric distance (i.e. temperature) may affect our interpretation of the data and discuss why the widely-used radiative conductivity exponent (α = –3/4) might not be adequate in general, as suggested in previous studies.