490 Veritas
| Discovery | |
|---|---|
| Discovered by | Max Wolf |
| Discovery site | Heidelberg Obs. |
| Discovery date | 3 September 1902 |
| Designations | |
| (490) Veritas | |
| Pronunciation | /ˈvɛrɪtəs/ VERR-i-təs |
| 1902 JP | |
| main-belt · (outer) Veritas [1] | |
| Orbital characteristics[2] | |
| Epoch 31 July 2016 (JD 2457600.5) | |
| Uncertainty parameter 0 | |
| Observation arc | 113.37 yr (41409 d) |
| Aphelion | 3.4715 AU (519.33 Gm) |
| Perihelion | 2.8719 AU (429.63 Gm) |
| 3.1717 AU (474.48 Gm) | |
| Eccentricity | 0.094527 |
| 5.65 yr (2063.2 d) | |
| 31.094° | |
| 0° 10m 28.164s / day | |
| Inclination | 9.2809° |
| 178.335° | |
| 194.390° | |
| Earth MOID | 1.87147 AU (279.968 Gm) |
| Jupiter MOID | 1.98443 AU (296.867 Gm) |
| TJupiter | 3.175 |
| Physical characteristics | |
| Dimensions | 110.96 ± 3.80 km[3] 115.55±5.5 km[2] |
| Mass | (5.99 ± 2.23) × 1018 kg[3] |
Mean density | 8.37 ± 3.23 g/cm3[3] |
| 7.930 h (0.3304 d) | |
| 0.0622±0.006 | |
| 8.53,[4] 8.32[2] | |
490 Veritas (/ˈvɛrɪtəs/ VERR-i-təs) is a carbonaceous Veritasian asteroid, which may have been involved in one of the more massive asteroid-asteroid collisions of the past 100 million years. It was discovered by German astronomer Max Wolf at Heidelberg Observatory on 3 September 1902.
Description
With an diameter of more than 100 kilometers, Veritas is the largest member and namesake of the Veritas family, a mid-sized asteroid family of carbonaceous asteroids in the outer main-belt, that formed recently approximately 8.5±0.5 million years ago.[1][5]: 8, 23 David Nesvorný of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder traced the orbits of these bodies back in time, and calculated that they formed in a collision of a body at least 150 km in diameter with a smaller asteroid. Veritas and Undina would have been the largest fragments of that collision which caused a late Miocene dust shower.The family consists of more than a thousand known members including 1086 Nata, 2428 Kamenyar and 2934 Aristophanes.
Late Miocene dust shower
Substantiating Nesvorný's estimate, Kenneth Farley et al. found evidence in sea-floor sediments of a fourfold increase in the amount of cosmic dust reaching Earth's surface, which began 8.2 million years ago and tapered off over the next million and a half years. This is one of the largest increases in dust deposits of the past 100 million years.[6]
The suspected Veritas collision would have been too far from Jupiter for the fragments to have been slung into a collision course with Earth. However, solar radiation would have caused the resulting dust to drift inward to Earth orbit over a time span consistent with the record of dust in the ocean sediment.
Today continuing collisions among Veritas-family asteroids are estimated to send five thousand tons of cosmic dust to Earth each year, 15% of the total.
References
- ^ a b "Small Bodies Data Ferret". Nesvorny HCM Asteroid Families V3.0. Retrieved 2 September 2017.
- ^ a b c Yeomans, Donald K., "490 Veritas", JPL Small-Body Database Browser, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, retrieved 9 May 2016.
- ^ a b c Carry, B. (December 2012), "Density of asteroids", Planetary and Space Science, vol. 73, pp. 98–118, arXiv:1203.4336, Bibcode:2012P&SS...73...98C, doi:10.1016/j.pss.2012.03.009. See Table 1.
- ^ Warner, Brian D. (December 2007), "Initial Results of a Dedicated H-G Project", The Minor Planet Bulletin, vol. 34, pp. 113–119, Bibcode:2007MPBu...34..113W.
- ^ Nesvorný, D.; Broz, M.; Carruba, V. (December 2014). "Identification and Dynamical Properties of Asteroid Families" (PDF). Asteroids IV: 297–321. arXiv:1502.01628. Bibcode:2015aste.book..297N. doi:10.2458/azu_uapress_9780816532131-ch016. Retrieved 2 September 2017.
- ^ Farley, Kenneth A.; Vokrouhlický, David; Bottke, William F.; Nesvorný, David (January 2006). "A late Miocene dust shower from the break-up of an asteroid in the main belt" (PDF). Nature. 439 (7074): 295–297. Bibcode:2006Natur.439..295F. doi:10.1038/nature04391. Retrieved 4 September 2017.
External links
- The Asteroid Veritas: An intruder in a family named after it?
- Lightcurve plot of (490) Veritas, Antelope Hills Observatory
- "Asteroid Smashup Yields Dust Shower on Earth" from SkyandTelescope.com, Jan. 20, 2006.
- 490 Veritas at the JPL Small-Body Database
