Abstract Stellar occultations provide a powerful technique for determining the size and shape of small bodies in the solar system. This work aims to develop and validate a probabilistic methodology capable of estimating the radius of an occulting body based on single-chord stellar occultation events. The method models the Bayesian posteriori probability distribution of object radii generated from the chord’s length, based on a circular projected shape. We performed Monte Carlo simulations to validate our methodology, and validation with real data from well-known objects yielded results consistent with those in the literature. For highly irregular bodies, deviations were larger but remained within physically meaningful bounds. This study shows that even single-chord occultations can provide scientifically valuable constraints on object size. The developed methodology offers a tool for statistical inference of asteroid sizes, especially as a first estimative when multichord occultations or thermal data are not available.
Morgado et al. (Fri,) studied this question.