Bibcode
de Leon, Julia; Pinilla-Alonso, Noemi; Campins, Humberto; Licandro, Javier; Morate, David; Lorenzi, Vania; De Prá, Mario; Rizos, Juan
Bibliographical reference
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #50, id.310.05
Advertised on:
10
2018
Citations
2
Refereed citations
2
Description
The study of primitive asteroids is relevant to understanding the origin
and evolution of our Solar System. These asteroids contain valuable
information about volatile and organic compounds present during the
prebiotic stages of Earth and other terrestrial planets. Interest in the
main-belt asteroids that are the likely sources of primitive near-Earth
asteroids (NEAs) has increased in anticipation of the two sample-return
missions that reached their targets in 2018 and will bring samples to
Earth within a few years. Concurrently, the discovery of water ice on
the surfaces of two primitive asteroids (24 Themis and 65 Cybele) placed
the focus on the outer-belt, where more asteroids could harbor water ice
on, or below the surface. In 2010 we started our PRIMitive Asteroids
Spectroscopic Survey (PRIMASS) with the goal of studying the surface of
primitive asteroids at different locations in the main belt, by means of
visible and near-infrared spectroscopy. Here we present PRIMASS-L, a
spectral library that contains the results of PRIMASS. As of July 2018,
this library gathers spectra of about 500 asteroids from 10 families and
two dynamical groups of asteroids that had been sparsely studied before.
PRIMASS uses a variety of ground-based facilities, including the 3.0-m
NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Mauna Kea (Hawai, USA) and
the 4.1-m Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR, participated
by NOAO), at Cerro Pachón (Chile). We also use the 10.4-m Gran
Telescopio Canarias (GTC), and the 3.6m Telescopio Nazionale Galileo
(TNG), both located at the El Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory (ORM,
La Palma, Spain) and the 3.6m New Technology Telescope (NTT), located at
la Silla Observatory. This survey is on-going and aims to contain a
thounsand of spectra by 2019. Making PRIMASS-L publicly available at
the Small Bodies Node of the Planetary Data System (SBN-PDS, NASA) will
enable synergies with other data sets containing physical parameters
(e.g. polarymetric properties and geometric albedo) and family
affiliation. This will push the characterization of the families and of
primitive material to a new level and improve our understanding of the
evolution of our Solar System and other planetary systems.