On December 5, 2017, EPSS alumnus Nathan Myhrovld presented a seminar at UCLA about his analysis of asteroid sizes and other properties.  You can find a videorecording of the talk at the bottom of this page.

Dr. Nathan Myhrvold

The WISE/NEOWISE Analyses and Results: An Empirical Examination

Observations from the WISE and NEOWISE missions have provided invaluable information about the diameter, visible and IR albedos, and other properties of ~164,000 asteroids—more than 16 times as many as all previous infrared asteroid observations combined. No other four-band space observing mission is currently planned. So it is imperative that we understand the strengths and weaknesses of this data and have clearly documented, reproducible methods of analyzing them. Dr. Nathan Myhrvold will discuss what he has learned from his independent, two-year empirical examination of the NEOWISE methods and results. His investigation has found that despite numerous preliminary papers published by the NEOWISE group, analysis of these data is far from a solved problem. Much work remains to be done to address systematic errors and inconsistencies in the results, to correct poorly fit properties, and to develop open, transparent analytical methods that can be reproduced for all of the data sets.