Senior Research Associate
Planetary Science Institute
neese
@psi.edu
Research Interests:
Physical studies of main-belt and near-earth asteroids
Population of faint comets
Sun-grazer comets
Detection of transneptunian objects
Binary asteroids
Current Projects:
Asteroid Subnode, Planetary Data System
Carol coordinates the archiving of groundbased and spacecraft data
on asteroids, as part of the Asteroid Subnode of NASA's Planetary
Data System (PDS). Current archiving projects include asteroid occultation
results, spectra and lightcurves of transneptunian objects, and the
massive Asteroid Photometric Catalog, a collection of asteroid
lightcurves from researchers throughout the world. Completed archiving
projects include the data from the NEAR mission to the asteroid Eros,
the IRAS Minor Planet Survey, asteroid spectra, lightcurves, polarimetry,
and radar data, as well as asteroid family classifications, albedos,
proper elements, and many others. The Asteroid Subnode is the lead node
for archiving data from the Hayabusa mission, a Japanese sample-return
mission to the asteroid Itokawa. The complete archive
to date can be accessed at the PDS
Asteroid Subnode web site.
Sub-Kilometer Asteroid Diameter Survey
This program to characterize the size distribution of small main-belt
asteroids involves PSI scientists Davis and Neese as well as
collaborators Gladman, Petit, Jedicke, and others. The data, taken
during a six night observing run with the KPNO 4m mosaic camera, included over
500 images covering an area of nine square degrees to a limiting
magnitude of R=23.5. During 2002, a massive moving object detection
code was used to detect approximately 1000-1300 asteroids per night,
which were tracked from night to night. These detections have been
linked to determine orbits and hence size estimates for the asteroids,
and the data are currently being debiased and analyzed to determine
a size distribution for the main belt down to sub-km diameters.
Other:
Carol also oversees PSI computer services, and maintains the PSI web site.
