Bibcode
Gil-Hutton, R.; Licandro, J.
Bibliographical reference
Icarus, Volume 206, Issue 2, p. 729-734.
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4
2010
Journal
Citations
13
Refereed citations
13
Description
In this paper we search for photometric data of asteroids in the outer
region of the Hecuba gap in the Moving Object Catalogue of the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey to find the spectrophotometric characteristics of
small members of this group. We found that the correlation between size
and spectral slope previously identified for Cybele asteroids is correct
only for large objects (HV<12) but it is not supported by
data obtained for the small ones. This result argues against the
scenario suggesting that D-type objects are more fragile than P-types,
favoring disruptive collisions of precursors of the first type and
resulting in a larger fraction of the smaller body population being
collisional fragments from a few large D-type precursors. A statistical
comparison of the spectral slope histograms of Cybeles and Hildas showed
that it is not possible to reject the hypothesis that both samples were
obtained from the same population at a confident limit of 90%. This
result could be indicative of certain homogeneity in the taxonomic
distributions of the outer belt populations due to a similar original
composition and/or a similar resurfacing processes of these distant
bodies. Despite the intrinsic limitations of the five band photometry of
the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the analysis presented is based mainly in
the detection of spectral slopes thus providing sufficient indication of
the taxonomic type of these asteroids and making us confident about our
conclusions.
Related projects
Minor Bodies of the Solar System
This project studies the physical and compositional properties of the so-called minor bodies of the Solar System, that includes asteroids, icy objects, and comets. Of special interest are the trans-neptunian objects (TNOs), including those considered the most distant objects detected so far (Extreme-TNOs or ETNOs); the comets and the comet-asteroid
Julia de
León Cruz