Sentences with phrase «asteroid families»

Identifying the very oldest asteroid families, those billions of years old, is challenging, because over time, a family spreads out.

Given the angle of this family's V - shaped leg, they estimate this primordial asteroid family is 4 billion years old.

The team used a new search technique that also identified the oldest known asteroid family, which extends throughout the inner region of the main asteroid belt.

Older asteroid families are harder to find, but this V signature can expose the age of these clusters.

Many asteroids there had already been flagged as members of asteroid families — that is, vestiges of the same smashed asteroids.

Identification of a primordial asteroid family constrains the original planetesimals population.

Researchers had previously traced the meteor to the Apollo asteroid family, but no one had matched it to a particular member of the group.

They wanted to learn as much as possible about dark asteroid families — fragments from asteroid collisions that tend to orbit as a collection — in the region of the belt closest to Earth and Mars.

ALL IN THE FAMILY By identifying the wreckage of past asteroid crashes (illustrated) known as asteroid families, astronomers can ignore those fragments and pick out asteroids that have remained intact since the early solar system.

By combining data from several previous studies, the team identified one more asteroid family — remnants of a smashup about 4 billion years ago.

Unlike the brighter, highly reflective asteroid families nearby, the dark asteroids» orbits are more spread out, meaning more time has passed since the asteroids formed.

A team including SwRI scientists developed a technique to identify ancient asteroid families that have drifted apart.

Finding and studying asteroid families allows scientists to better understand the history of main belt asteroids.

A collision may fragment an asteroid in numerous small pieces (leading to the formation of a new asteroid family), or may glue two asteroids together if it occurs at low relative speeds.

(6) Is there more evidence for mature solar system processes, like (η Corvi's Late Geavy Bombardment and HD 69830's asteroid family formation, in the disk record?

Related sites David Nesvorný's home page, with links to details of new study Simulations of birth and growth of asteroid families

The resulting paper, «Identification of a primordial asteroid family constrains the original planetesimal population,» appears in the August 3, 2017, online edition of Science.

Jorge Zuluaga of the University of Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia, who traced Chelyabinsk to the Apollo asteroid family, cautions that 2011 EO40 has yet to be confirmed as the parent.

Bennu is almost certainly a member of one of these dark asteroid families, Delbo said.

But, an international team tipped the debate Thursday in Science with the discovery of one of the oldest known asteroid families.

Astronomers have identified the oldest asteroid families and, by process of elimination, the oldest intact asteroids in the main belt.

By aggregating the sizes of the modern dark asteroids, researchers suggest the original dark planetesimals formed about 4 billion years ago, making this one of the oldest asteroid families in the main belt; most asteroid families are thought to have formed about 1 billion years ago.

Dr. Masiero will discuss how the asteroid families in the belt today are the last remnants of these massive collisions, and give us a window into the processes that shaped our Solar System.

Because smaller chunks of asteroids drift from the point of collision faster than larger pieces do, these asteroid families become shaped like the letter «V.» Smaller pieces spread out far and wide from the original impact site, while larger fragments remain condensed at the point.

Members of an asteroid family, which originate from a single asteroid, have similar traits, like how dark or bright they are.

In particular, DeMeo points out that Delbo and his team were looking at one type of asteroid family — the dark asteroids on the inner side of the belt.