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This work proposes a thermophysical model for realistic surface layers onairless small bodies (RSTPM), for the use of interpreting their multi-epochthermal lightcurves (e.g WISE/NEOWISE). RSTPM considers real orbital cycle,rotation cycle, rough surface, temperature dependent thermal parameters, aswell as contributions of sunlight reflection to observations, hence being ableto produce precise temperature distribution and thermal emission of airlesssmall bodies regarding the variations in orbital time scales. Details of thephysics, mathematics and numerical algorithms of RSTPM are presented. When usedto interpret multi-epoch thermal lightcurves by WISE/NEOWISE, RSTPM can giveconstraints on the spin orientation and surface physical properties, like meanthermal inertia or mean size of dust grains, roughness fraction, albedo and soon via radiometric procedure. As an application example, we apply this model tothe main-belt object (24) Themis, the largest object of the Themis family,which is believed to be the source region of many main-belt comets. We findmulti-epoch (2010, 2014-2018) observations of Themis by WISE/NEOWISE, yielding18 thermal lightcurves. By fitting these data with RSTPM, best-fit spinorientation of Themis is derived to be ($\lambda=137^\circ$, $\beta=59^\circ$)in ecliptic coordinates, the mean radius of dust grains on the surface isestimated to be $\tilde{b}=140^{+500}_{-114}(6\sim640)~\mu$m, indicating thesurface thermal inertia to vary from $\sim3\rm~Jm^{-2}s^{-0.5}K^{-1}$ to$\sim60\rm~Jm^{-2}s^{-0.5}K^{-1}$ due to seasonal temperature variation.Further analysis found that thermal light curves of Themis show a weakrotation-phase dependent feature, indicative of heterogeneous thermalproperties or imperfections of lightcurve inversion shape model.

Thermophysical model for realistic surface layers on airless small  bodies: applied to study the spin orientation and surface dust properties of  (24) Themis from WISE/NEOWISE multi-epoch thermal lightcurves