Bibcode
de León, J.; Pinilla-Alonso, N.; Campins, H.; Licandro, J.; Marzo, G. A.
Bibliographical reference
Icarus, Volume 218, Issue 1, p. 196-206.
Advertised on:
3
2012
Journal
Citations
69
Refereed citations
68
Description
We present near-infrared spectra of 23 B-type asteroids obtained with
the NICS camera-spectrograph at the 3.56 m Telescopio Nazionale Galileo.
We also compile additional visible and near-infrared spectra of another
22 B-type asteroids from the literature. A total of 45 B-types are
analyzed. No significant trends in orbital properties of our sample were
detected when compared with all known B-types and all known asteroids.
The reflectance spectra of the asteroids in the 0.8-2.5 μm
range show a continuous shape variation, from a monotonic negative
(blue) slope to a positive (red) slope. This continuous spectral trend
is filling the gap between the two main groups of B-types published by
Clark et al. ([2010]. J. Geophys. Res., 115, 6005-6027). We found
no clear correlations between the spectral slope and the asteroids'
sizes or heliocentric distances. We apply a clustering technique to
reduce the volume of data to six optimized "average spectra" or
"centroids", representative of the whole sample. These centroids are
then compared against meteorite spectra from the RELAB database. We
found carbonaceous chondrites as the best meteorite analogs for the six
centroids. There is a progressive change in analogs that correlates with
the spectral slope: from CM2 chondrites (water-rich, aqueously altered)
for the reddest centroid, to CK4 chondrites (dry, heated/thermally
altered) for the bluest one.
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