Who discovered the Pallas family of asteroids?
Kiyotsugu Hirayama discovered the Pallas family in 1928. He grouped thousands of rocks into families based on their orbital paths to reveal hidden patterns within the solar system's debris field.
Questions about Pallas family
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What is the mean diameter of asteroid 2 Pallas?
Asteroid 2 Pallas has a mean diameter of about 512 kilometers. It dominates the group as an extremely large rock compared to its siblings and serves as a unique anchor for studying these distant objects.
Where are the Pallas family asteroids located in the asteroid belt?
The proper semi-major axis ranges from 2.71 AU to 2.79 AU for these asteroids. Their inclinations stretch between 30 degrees and 38 degrees at the present epoch, placing the family at very high inclinations in the intermediate asteroid belt.
Why do most members of the Pallas family have B-type spectra?
B-type asteroids make up the majority of this group's visible spectrum because they originated from deep beneath the surface of 2 Pallas. The presence of such specific minerals helps distinguish this family from others nearby and suggests that impacts exposed layers not usually seen on smaller bodies.
When did the collision that formed the Pallas family occur?
Evidence indicates the family consists of ejecta from impacts on the parent body long ago. Most members likely formed when a massive object struck the large asteroid, causing debris to scatter into similar orbits around the sun.