Asteroid sizes and albedos

Abstract

The radiometric method of determining asteroid diameters is described, and a synthesis of radiometric and polarimetric measurements of the diameters and geometric albedos of a total of 187 asteroids is presented. An analysis is offered of the size distributions of different albedo classes down to 80-km diameter for the entire main asteroid belt (2.0-3.5 AU). The distribution of albedos is found to be strongly bimodal, with mean albedos for the C and S group of 0.035 and 0.15, respectively. The C asteroids outnumber the S asteroids at all sizes and all values of semimajor axis, with the proportion of C asteroids increasing from a little over half inside 2.5 AU to more than 95% beyond 3.0 AU. Other aspects of the distribution of C, S, and M asteroids are discussed, and the total mass of main-belt asteroids larger than 70 km is estimated.