Multifilter photometry of Solar System objects from the SkyMapper Southern Survey^⋆

¹ Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Laboratoire Lagrange, France
e-mail: alexey.sergeyev@oca.eu
² Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University, Canberra 2611, Australia
³ Centre for Gravitational Astrophysics, College of Science, The Australian National University, ACT 2601, Australia
⁴ School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University, Perth WA 6845, Australia
⁵ SNU Astronomy Research Center, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-rho, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 08826, Korea
⁶ Astronomy program, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, SNU, 1 Gwanak-rho, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 08826, Korea
⁷ V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, 4 Svobody Sq., Kharkiv 61022, Ukraine

Received: 23 August 2021
Accepted: 20 October 2021

Abstract

Context. The populations of small bodies of the Solar System (asteroids, comets, and Kuiper Belt objects) are used to constrain the origin and evolution of the Solar System. Their orbital distribution and composition distribution are both required to track the dynamical pathway from their formation regions to their current locations.

Aims. We aim to increase the sample of Solar System objects (SSOs) that have multifilter photometry and compositional taxonomy.

Methods. We searched for moving objects in the SkyMapper Southern Survey. We used the predicted SSO positions to extract photometry and astrometry from the SkyMapper frames. We then applied a suite of filters to clean the catalog from false-positive detections. We finally used the near-simultaneous photometry to assign a taxonomic class to objects.

Results. We release a catalog of 880 528 individual observations, consisting of 205 515 known and unique SSOs. The catalog completeness is estimated to be about 97% down to V = 18 mag and the purity is higher than 95% for known SSOs. The near-simultaneous photometry provides either three, two, or a single color that we use to classify 117 356 SSOs with a scheme consistent with the widely used Bus-DeMeo taxonomy.

Conclusions. The present catalog contributes significantly to the sample of asteroids with known surface properties (about 40% of main-belt asteroids down to an absolute magnitude of 16). We will release more observations of SSOs with future SkyMapper data releases.