PRELIMINARY RESULTS FROM NEOWISE: AN ENHANCEMENT TO THE WIDE-FIELD INFRARED SURVEY EXPLORER FOR SOLAR SYSTEM SCIENCE

The \emph{Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer} has surveyed the entire sky at four infrared wavelengths with greatly improved sensitivity and spatial resolution compared to its predecessors, the \emph{Infrared Astronomical Satellite} and the \emph{Cosmic Background Explorer}. NASA's Planetary Science Division has funded an enhancement to the \WISE\ data processing system called "NEOWISE" that allows detection and archiving of moving objects found in the \WISE\ data. NEOWISE has mined the \WISE\ images for a wide array of small bodies in our Solar System, including Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), Main Belt asteroids, comets, Trojans, and Centaurs. By the end of survey operations in February 2011, NEOWISE identified…

• NA
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• CI
  California Institute of Technology
• JP
  Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• UO
  University of California, Los Angeles
• PS
  Planetary Science Division