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A Warm Spitzer survey of approximately 700
near-Earth objects (NEOs)
has been started to derive albedos and diameters of the numerous
small
bodies. We present a ground-based NEO observation program designed
to
complement the Spitzer data. By using a variety of observational
techniques, we aim to obtain optical magnitudes, light curves and
compositional information for many of these objects. We have started
a
program to obtain high-quality optical magnitudes of all 700 Spitzer
targets, using a variety of telescope facilities with a range of
apertures (from 0.36 m to 8 m). For a subset of our targets, we will
also obtain lightcurves-- which will be used as a proxy for the
larger
sample. We plan to obtain spectra of ~250 objects. These
spectroscopic
results will allow us to derive compositions for nearly half our
sample and act as a ground-truth for the larger, complete sample.
This
catalog of objects will serve as a fiducial reference sample for a
wide variety of future NEO studies. In addition to our large scale
campaign our Warm Spitzer program allows us to couple the new data
with relevant radar derived sizes of known binary asteroids and
derive
density estimates for these systems.
Observations have been made using the NASA Infrared Telescope
Facility
(SpeX), the Las Campanas Swope 1-meter, Magellan (PANIC/IMACS/MMIRS),
NOAO SMARTS telescopes and several smaller telescopes. Upcoming
observations will include SOAR, Gemini and the Magdalena Ridge
Observatory. We have pending proposals for a variety of NOAO
facilities.
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