近地小行星发现数目与发现场景的统计分析

Statistical Analysis of Discoveries and Discovery Scenarios of Near-Earth Asteroids

近地小行星是一类可能对地球安全造成潜在威胁的太阳系小天体,目前绝大部分的近地小行星是由地基望远镜发现的,且数目仍在不断增加.为了对我国未来开展近地小行星发现监测提供参考和借鉴,利用国际小行星中心公开的数据库对所有近地小行星首次发现时刻的观测资料开展了多维度统计分析.发现望远镜探测能力的限制会对近地小行星的发现造成选择效应,导致不同轨道类型近地小行星发现的相对比例逐年变化且与直径有关.另外,结合数值模拟获得的轨道数据,对近地小行星首次发现时的观测场景进行了还原,获得了发现时刻近地小行星位置在不同天球坐标系的分布,分析了其分布特征与季节、测站纬度和小行星直径的依赖关系.最后,通过分析数据定量考察了太阳、月球和银道面对近地小行星发现的影响,发现地基望远镜一般难以发现来自太阳方向90°范围内直径140 m以下的近地小行星,并且随着小行星直径的减小该限制范围也将变大;月光污染对近地小行星发现的影响也非常显著,望月前后几天的观测限制可导致约29%的目标无法被发现,而且分析表明农历上半月发现的目标一般比下半月发现的更难以被跟踪观测;银道面特别是银心方向会对近地小行星发现产生影响,使得黄道面附近存在与季节相关的观测“盲区”.

Near-Earth asteroids(NEAs) are a kind of small solar system bodies that may lead to potential hazard to the safety of the Earth.Currently,most of the NEAs are discovered with groundbased telescopes while the number is still growing.In order to provide references and experience to our future near-Earth asteroid discovery and monitoring,we perform a multi-dimensionally statistical analysis on the discovery data of NEAs with public database obtained from the website of Minor Planet Center(MPC).We find the constraint of observation ability can lead to selection effect on the discoveries,which causes a yearly dependence trend and a size-dependence characteristic of the relative proportion of different orbit types of discovered NEAs.Besides,combined with the orbits obtained from numerical simulations,we recover the discovery scenarios of these objects.The position distribution of the objects under different celestial coordinate systems are obtained,and the dependence on seasons,observatory latitudes,and the diameters are analyzed.Finally,we quantify the impact of the Sun,the Moon and the galactic plane on the discoveries by analyzing the observation data and find that ground-based telescopes generally have difficulty in discovering NEAs within 90° from the Sun direction,and that this limitation generally has a greater impact on smaller-sized objects.The lunar position also has a significant effect on the discoveries,with the restriction on the nights before and after the full Moon resulting in 29% of NEAs being undiscovered,and analysis shows that objects found in the first half of the lunar calendar month are generally more difficult to be followed than those found in the second half.The galactic plane,especially the direction near the galactic center,also has an effect on the discoveries,resulting in a season-dependent“blind spot” for observations near the ecliptic.