IRAS known asteroid prediction and association

Techniques and procedures employed to obtain data concerning the known asteroids from IRAS observations are discussed. The IRAS observations covered 95 percent of the sky with at least four scans of the telescope field of view. A search was first carried out for geometrical intersections of the trajectories of a given asteroid and the telescope boresight, following which a matched sighting was sought for each such intersection among the actual IRAS point source detections. By using ground based measurements of visual magnitudes, IRAS observations of IR brightness, and a thermal model, albedos and diameters have been computed for 1,822 known asteroids, increasing the amount of this kind of information by about an order of magnitude.