The Early Stages of Formation of a Solar System Dust Band

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

A solar system dust band is formed as the dust released in the catastrophic disruption of an asteroid in the main belt decays under the effects of radiation forces and is sculpted by gravitational perturbations. There are currently known to be at least three full dust band pairs (Low et al., 1984) and these have been associated with several-million-year-old asteroidal disruptions (Dermott et al., 2002; Nesvorny et al., 2003; 2008). A method of coadding the IRAS data set to increase the signal-to-noise ratio revealed the existence of an additional, very faint, partially-formed dust band at 17 degrees inclination (Espy et al., 2009), likely a confirmation of the M/N pair suggested by Sykes (1988). Partial dust bands represent a very early stage of the dynamical evolution of the dust released in the catastrophic disruption of a parent asteroid.
We build a model of the formation of this partial band, in order to determine the main dynamical mechanisms controlling dust band formation. Comparison of this model to the coadded IRAS observations also allows us to put strong constraints on the node, semi-major axis, inclination and age of the source body, as well as the cross-sectional area and size-distribution of dust in the band. Because of the young age of partial dust bands, typically much less than a million years old, collisions have not yet begun to play an important role and the size-distribution is closer to that created in the original disruption. Additionally, less of the dust produced in the disruption has been lost to removal by P-R drag than in the older, fully-formed dust bands. These factors imply that partial dust bands provide important information about the dust originally produced in the catastrophic disruption of an asteroid.

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