What is it about?
In the first part of the paper, we define the term very young asteroid families (VYF), that is to say, younger than 1.6 Myrs, and explain why we have defined this group as being separate from young fami- lies (younger than 100 Myr), due to specific characteristics, in particularly, non-gravitational forces which have a very small effect (which could be negligible) on their dynamics and the role of the initial con- ditions in VYFs as being more significant. Due to these facts, the way we study VYFs may be different relative to young families. For the most part, the calculation of VYFs’ normal component of relative velocity using backward numerical integration, exhibited a clear, deep minimum, which was close to the breakup epoch. The age estimations found while employing this method were in excellent agreement with the established age estimations used by other authors.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
the z-component of relative velocity may be an additional and useful criterion for VYF age estimation. This seems to strongly indicate that the studied value of relative veloc- ity is proportionate to the ejection velocity.
Perspectives
Future progress will be possible when other components of rel- ative velocity are found. The small differences in the results noted between our method of relative velocity and single-orbital element convergence may be due to a dependence on other still unknown components of relative velocity.
Alexey E Rosaev
None
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: On relative velocity in very young asteroid families, Icarus, April 2018, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2017.12.031.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
