Albedo and Diameter Distributions of Asteroid Families Using the Spitzer Asteroid Catalog

Details Albedo and Diameter Distributions of Asteroid Families Using the Spitzer Asteroid Catalog Albedo and Diameter Distributions of Asteroid Families Using the Spitzer Asteroid Catalog

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.3402e&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #34.02

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The Spitzer Asteroid Catalog contains flux measurements of asteroids serendipitously observed in publicly available Spitzer data. At present, this catalog contains some 10,000 measurements at 24 microns only, and will ultimately contain 100,000 measurements or more. These measurements, along with with optical photometry from the the Minor Planet Center, are used to calculate the albedos and diameters of asteroids using the Standard Thermal Model (Lebofsky et al 1986) and the Near Earth Asteroid Thermal Model (Harris 1998). In this study we used these data to investigate the albedo and diameter distributions within asteroid families. Asteroid families are groups of asteroids with similar orbital properties that are thought to be fragments of past asteroid collisions. Around one third of known asteroids are members of asteroid families. For the first time, the homogeneity of albedos within asteroid families can be measured. Additionally, true diameters can be used to study size distributions within asteroid families. We used the Hierarchical Clustering Method of Zappala et al (1995) to identify family members. We will present results from our study, including mean and dispersion of albedos for a number of inner and outer main belt asteroid families of different ages. We will also present size distributions for these asteroid families. We will discuss the implications for the history of these asteroid families and, by extension, the main asteroid belt. This work is based in part on archival data obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. Support for this work was provided by an award issued by JPL/Caltech.

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