Are Some Asteroid Families From The Time Of The Late Heavy Bombardment?

Details Are Some Asteroid Families From The Time Of The Late Heavy Bombardment? Are Some Asteroid Families From The Time Of The Late Heavy Bombardment?

Oct 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.0408m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #4.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.949

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) of the Moon 3.8 Gy ago was presumably a global event that affected the main belt asteroids as well. We do see indeed a spike in meteorite shock ages 3.8Gy ago (Kring and Swindle, 2008). Thus, we would expect that several asteroid families formed at that time. Our work on the evolution of the giant planets at the LHB-time implies that the asteroid orbits were affected less than previously thought (Morbidelli et al., DPS2009). Thus, while families that formed before or during the LHB would have been significantly dispersed in eccentricity (e) and inclination (i), they should still be recognizable today. From an analysis of the color distribution, Parker et al. (2008) showed that some asteroid families are much more dispersed in e and i than the "core" families identified from proper elements clustering. We propose here that at least some of these families formed during the LHB. As an example, we focus on the Eos family. Vokrouhlicky et al. (2006) showed that the confinement of this family within mean motion resonances requires an initial velocity dispersion <80m/s. Yet, using this initial dispersion, the subsequent evolution in the current solar system produces an (e,i) dispersion that is only half of that observed in the "core" family. In addition, the SDSS colors suggest that the real dispersion of the family is 2-3 times larger than the "core". So, there is definitely a problem in understanding the (e,i) dispersion of the Eos family. We show that a break-up event with a velocity dispersion <80m/s at the time of the LHB can easily result in a family with an identifiable core and a full dispersion comparable to that observed for objects matching Eos' color.

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