Discovery of a young subfamily of the (221)~Eos asteroid family

Abstract

In this work we report the discovery of a young cluster of asteroids that originated by the breakup of an asteroid member of the (221)Eos family. By applying the Hierarchical clustering method to the catalog of proper elements we have identified 26 members of this new small group of asteroids. We have established that the statistical significance of this cluster is $>99\%$, therefore it corresponds to a real asteroid family, named the (633)Zelima cluster, after its lowest numbered member. The orbits of its members are dynamically stable, a fact that enabled us to use the backward integration method, in two variants to identify potential interlopers and estimate its age. Applying it first on the orbits of the nominal family members we identified three asteroids as interlopers. Then we applied it on a set of statistically equivalent clones of each member to determine the age of the cluster, with a result of $2.9\pm 0.2$Myrs.

References in corpus (11)

• Main Belt Asteroids with WISE/NEOWISE I: Preliminary Albedos and Diameters
• Asteroid family ages
• On the Ages of Resonant, Eroded and Fossil Asteroid Families
• Spectral variability on primitive asteroids of the Themis and Beagle families: space weathering effects or parent body heterogeneity?
• Atlas of three body mean motion resonances in the Solar System
• P/2006 VW139: A Main-Belt Comet Born in an Asteroid Collision?
• The Eos family halo
• Discovery of a young asteroid cluster associated with P/2012~F5 (Gibbs)
• Portrait of Theobalda as a Young Asteroid Family
• Secular resonances with Ceres and Vesta
• Recent collisional jet from a primitive asteroid

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Asteroid Families: properties, recent advances and future opportunities
• SsODNet: The Solar system Open Database Network
• Asteroid migration due to the Yarkovsky effect and the distribution of the Eos family
• Identifying the population of stable ${\nu }_6$ resonant asteroids using large databases
• A dynamical dichotomy in large binary asteroids