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Register a new userUnexpected D-type Interlopers in the Inner Main Belt
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Very red featureless asteroids (spectroscopic D-types) are expected to have formed in the outer solar system far from the sun. They comprise the majority of asteroids in the Jupiter Trojan population, and are also commonly found in the outer main belt and among Hildas. The first evidence for D-types in the inner and middle parts of the main belt was seen in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Here we report follow-up observations of SDSS D-type candidates in the near-infrared. Based on follow up observations of 13 SDSS D-type candidates, we find a ~20% positive confirmation rate. Known inner belt D-types range in diameter from roughly 7 to 30 kilometers. Based on these detections we estimate there are ~100 inner belt D-types with diameters between 2.5 and 20km. The lower and upper limits for total mass of inner belt D-types is 2x$10^{16}$ kg to 2x$10^{17}$ kg which represents 0.01% to 0.1% of the mass of the inner belt. The inner belt D-types have albedos at or above the upper end typical for D-types which raises the question as to whether these inner belt bodies represent only a subset of D-types, they have been altered by external factors such as weathering processes, or if they are compositionally distinct from other D-types. All D-types and candidates have diameters less than 30km, yet there is no obvious parent body in the inner belt. Dynamical models have yet to show how D-types originating from the outer solar system could penetrate into the inner reaches of the Main Belt under current scenarios of planet formation and subsequent Yarkovsky drift.
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We have observed the lightcurves of 13 V-type asteroids ((1933) Tinchen, (2011) Veteraniya, (2508) Alupka, (3657) Ermolova, (3900) Knezevic, (4005) Dyagilev, (4383) Suruga, (4434) Nikulin, (4796) Lewis, (6331) 1992 $mathrm{FZ_{1}}$, (8645) 1998 TN, (10285) Renemichelsen, and (10320) Reiland). Using these observations we determined the rotational rates of the asteroids, with the exception of Nikulin and Renemichelsen. The distribution of rotational rates of 59 V-type asteroids in the inner main belt, including 29 members of the Vesta family that are regarded as ejecta from the asteroid (4) Vesta, is inconsistent with the best-fit Maxwellian distribution. This inconsistency may be due to the effect of thermal radiation Yarkovsky--OKeefe--Radzievskii--Paddack (YORP) torques, and implies that the collision event that formed V-type asteroids is sub-billion to several billion years in age.
The observationally complete sample of the main belt asteroids now spans more than two orders of magnitude in size and numbers more than 64,000 (excluding collisional family members). We undertook an analysis of asteroids eccentricities and their interpretation with simple physical models. We find that Plummers (1916) conclusion that the asteroids eccentricities follow a Rayleigh distribution holds for the osculating eccentricities of large asteroids, but the proper eccentricities deviate from a Rayleigh distribution: there is a deficit of eccentricities smaller than $sim0.1$ and an excess of larger eccentricities. We further find that the proper eccentricities do not depend significantly on asteroid size but have strong dependence on heliocentric distance: the outer asteroid belt follows a Rayleigh distribution, but the inner belt is strikingly different. Eccentricities in the inner belt can be modeled as a vector sum of a primordial eccentricity vector of random orientation and magnitude drawn from a Rayleigh distribution of parameter $sim0.06$, and an excitation of random phase and magnitude $sim0.13$. These results imply that a late dynamical excitation of the asteroids occurred, it was independent of asteroid size, it was stronger in the inner belt than in the outer belt. We discuss implications for the primordial asteroid belt and suggest that the observationally complete sample size of main belt asteroids is large enough that more sophisticated model-fitting of the eccentricities is warranted and could serve to test alternative theoretical models of the dynamical excitation history of asteroids and its links to the migration history of the giant planets.
We present the K2 light curves of a large sample of untargeted Main Belt asteroids (MBAs) detected with the Kepler space telescope. The asteroids were observed within the Uranus superstamp, a relatively large, continuous field with low stellar background designed to cover the planet Uranus and its moons during Campaign 8 of the K2 mission. The superstamp offered the possibility to obtain precise, uninterrupted light curves of a large number of MBAs and thus to determine unambiguous rotation rates for them. We obtained photometry for 608 MBAs, and were able to determine or estimate rotation rates for 90 targets, of which 86 had no known values before. In an additional 16 targets we detected incomplete cycles and/or eclipse-like events. We found the median rotation rate to be significantly longer than that of the ground-based observations indicating that the latter are biased towards shorter rotation rates. Our study highlights the need and benefits of further continuous photometry of asteroids.
Differentiated asteroids are rare in the main asteroid belt despite evidence for ~100 distinct differentiated bodies in the meteorite record. We have sought to understand why so few main-belt asteroids differentiated and where those differentiated bodies or fragments reside. Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to search for a needle in a haystack we identify spectral A-type asteroid candidates, olivine-dominated asteroids that may represent mantle material of differentiated bodies. We have performed a near-infrared spectral survey with SpeX on the NASA IRTF and FIRE on the Magellan Telescope. We report results from having doubled the number of known A-type asteroids. We deduce a new estimate for the overall abundance and distribution of this class of olivine-dominated asteroids. We find A-type asteroids account for less than 0.16% of all main-belt objects larger than 2 km and estimate there are a total of ~600 A-type asteroids above that size. They are found rather evenly distributed throughout the main belt, are even detected at the distance of the Cybele region, and have no statistically significant concentration in any asteroid family. We conclude the most likely implication is the few fragments of olivine-dominated material in the main belt did not form locally, but instead were implanted as collisional fragments of bodies that formed elsewhere.
The recent discovery of the first V-type asteroid in the middle belt, (21238) 1995WV7, located at ~2.54 AU, raises the question of whether it came from (4) Vesta or not. In this paper, we present spectroscopic observations indicating the existence of another V-type asteroid at ~2.53 AU, (40521) 1999RL95, and we investigate the possibility that these two asteroids evolved from the Vesta family to their present orbits by drifting in semi-major axis due to the Yarkovsky effect. The main problem with this scenario is that the asteroids need to cross the 3/1 mean motion resonance with Jupiter, which is highly unstable. Combining numerical simulations of the orbital evolution, that include the Yarkovsky effect, with Monte Carlo models, we compute the probability of an asteroid of given diameter D to evolve from the Vesta family and to cross over the 3/1 resonance, reaching a stable orbit in the middle belt. Our results indicate that an asteroid like (21238) 1995WV7 has a low probability of having evolved through this mechanism due to its large size (~5 km). However, the mechanism might explain the orbit of smaller bodies like (40521) 1999RL95 (~3 km), provided that we assume that the Vesta family formed > 3.5 Gy ago. We estimate that about 10% or more of the V-type bodies with D>1 km may come from the Vesta family by crossing over the 3/1 resonance. The remaining 90% must have a different origin.
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