Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Nov 2004
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004dps....36.3211b&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #36, #32.11; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 36, p.1140
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
We present preliminary results from an ongoing near-infrared spectroscopic survey of silicate-rich asteroids. The goals of this survey are to sample the full range of silicate mineralogies present in the main belt for asteroids with diameters larger than 5 km, and to map the distributions of these mineralogies as functions of orbital elements. Results from this work will help place constraints on conditions in the inner solar system during proto-planetary formation, and on the degree of heating/differentiation that occurred in the asteroid belt.
The largest class of silicate-rich asteroids is the S-types. Members of this class have spectra containing diagnostic absorption bands centered near 1- and 2-microns. Variations in these bands are indicative of a wide range in pyroxene/olivine compositions (i.e. Gaffey et al. 1993, Icarus 106, 573). Our study of the S-type asteroids combines visible-wavelength spectra from the SMASSII survey (Bus and Binzel 2002, Icarus 158, 106) with high S/N near-IR (0.8 - 2.5 micron) spectra that are being obtained with SpeX (Rayner et al. 2003, PASP 115, 362) at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. The analysis presented here uses both band-parameter measurements (Cloutis et al. 1986, JGR 91, 11641) and principal component analysis (PCA) to group the S-type asteroids into sub-classes based on their spectral properties and inferred compositions. Based on our present sample of over 150 asteroids, we examine the distributions of these groupings as functions of orbital semi-major axis, eccentricity and inclination. Our goal is to determine the amount of spectral variation present among members of several dynamical families, and to look for larger-scale trends in olivine/pyroxene composition with heliocentric distance that may provide clues about heating across the early asteroid belt.
This work was supported by NSF grant AST-0307688.
Berghuis J. L.
Binzel Richard P.
Bus Schelte J.
Volquardsen Eric L.
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