Vesta family

In the top diagrams, the proper orbital elements are plotted (inclination i_p vs. semi-major axis a_p on the left, and inclination i_p vs. eccentricity e_p on the right) for numbered asteroids in the main belt.

In the bottom enlargements, one has:

• core family members (shown in red) are those identified by the 1995 Zappala (V. Zappala et al, Icarus Vol. 116, p. 291 (1995)) HCM method analysis. The data set is here.
• outer family members (shown in purple) were identified by the same analysis, but are somewhat less certain to be members (were given a quality tag of "1" in the data-set)
• interlopers (shown in green) were identified either:
  • in A. Cellino et al "Spectroscopic Properties of Asteroid Families", in Asteroids III, p. 633-643, University of Arizona Press (2002). (Table on page 636, in particular),
  • and also by inspection of the PDS asteroid taxonomy data set for non V- or J-type members of the above Zappala 1995 data.
• numbered asteroids in general (shown as small blue dots), from the AstDys database.

The location of asteroids that are very large and/or explicitly named on the plot is shown by a light cross within the circle.

Asteroid diameters were obtained from two sources:

• (thick circles): From the IRAS survey, when available (data set here).
• (thin circles): Otherwise, by assuming an albedo of 0.1 (approximate average of non-interlopers in the IRAS survey), and estimating from absolute magnitudes from the AstOrb database here.

The diagrams were created by me (Piotr Deuar) using proper element data for 96944 minor planets, which was obtained from the AstDys site. Data was dated March 2005, calculation was by Z. Knezevic and A. Milani.