WISE/NEOWISE Mars-crossing asteroids

We also obtained 1572 diameters from data from the 3-Band and posterior non-cryogenic phases using a default value of beaming parameter. The average beaming parameter is 1.2+/-0.2 for objects smaller than 10km, which constitute most of our sample. This is higher than the typical value of 1.0 found for the whole main belt and is possibly related to the fact that WISE is able to observe many more small objects at shorter heliocentric distances, i.e. at higher phase angles.

We argue that this is a better default value for modelling Mars-crossing asteroids from the WISE/NEOWISE catalogue and discuss the effects of this choice on the diameter and albedo distributions. We find a double-peaked distribution for the visible geometric albedos, which is expected since this population is compositionally diverse and includes objects in the major spectral complexes. However, the distribution of beaming parameters is homogeneous for both low- and high-albedo objects.