[meteorite-list] Minor Planet families

[lebofsky at lpl.arizona.edu]

Hi Graham:

I am far from an asteroid dynamics person, but many (but not all) asteroid
families tend to share compositional similarities and so may very well be
remnants of larger objects that have "recently" been broken up in a
collisional event. The families are usually (but not always) named for
their largest member. This is important in that if members of these
families are in the "right place" in the asteroid belt, their members'
orbits may be perturbed over time into Earth-crossing orbits and then
Earth-impacting orbits, so that they may be the sources of some of the
meteorites we see.

Connecting individual asteroids to classes of meteorites is another story!

Larry

> Hi Graham,
>
>> Thanks Rob....so the named groups at the moment just represent similar
>> orbiting asteroids which over time have settled into that orbit over
>> time after they were nudged from the asteroid belt ...
>
> The "asteroid belt" is a pretty broad term. Between the orbits of Mars
> and Jupiter are over a dozen major named families (e.g. Cybele, Eos,
> Eunomia, Flora, Hilda, Hungaria, Koronis, Maria, Nysa, Phocaea, Themis,
> Main Belt I, Main Belt II, Main Belt IIb, Main Belt IIIa, Main Belt IIIb).
> It's
> not unlike the naming of different meteorite groups: just as all
> H-chondrites
> share common features, each asteroid family has a particular combination
> of orbital elements (semi-major axis and inclination are the primary
> determinants of a minor planet's family) that distinguish it from its
> neighbors.
>
> --Rob
>
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