The Karin family or Karin cluster is an
asteroid family and sub-group of the
Koronis family. It consists of at least 90
main-belt asteroid
An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the Solar System#Inner Solar System, inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter (Trojan asteroids). As ...
s. What makes them special is that scientists have used the orbits of 13 members to calculate backwards until they were all found to share the same orbit — that of the parent body from which they all originated.
The family is named for its largest member,
832 Karin, which has a diameter of about . It represents about 15–20% of the mass of the original body which had an estimated diameter of . (832) Karin is an
S-type asteroid. (4507) 1990FV was originally thought to be a member of the family but was identified in 2004 as an interloper. The other members have diameters in the 1–7 km range (0.6–4.3 miles).
The family is believed to have been created 5.8 ± 0.2 million years ago,
Space.com: Recent Crash Created Youngest Known Asteroid Family
making it the most recent known asteroid collision. Because the surfaces of the family members are relatively pristine, spectroscopic analysis can tell scientists much about their composition and could shed new light on the question of how closely asteroids and meteorites are related. The fact that we know when their surfaces were formed will also be useful in determining the rate of crater formation in asteroids. It is estimated that in about 100 million years the family will have dispersed to a degree where it cannot be separated from the background population of asteroids.
The family may also be the source of one of the interplanetary dust bands discovered by the IRAS
The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (Dutch language, Dutch: ''Infrarood Astronomische Satelliet'') (IRAS) was the first space telescope to perform a astronomical survey, survey of the entire night sky at infrared wavelengths. Launched on 25 Janu ...
satellite and may also have generated meteorites which would have compositions consistent with S-type asteroids and cosmic ray
Cosmic rays or astroparticles are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the ...
exposure ages of approximately 5.8 million years.
A study of the Karin family has for the first time detected the Yarkovsky effect in main belt asteroids.
References
{{reflist
1. Nesvorný, D., et al. 2002. The recent breakup of an asteroid in the main-belt region. Nature 417(6890):720-722.
2. Nesvorný, D., Bottke, W.F., Levison, H.F., Dones, L., 2003. Recent origin
of the Solar System dust bands. Astrophys. J. 591, 486–497.
3. Nesvorný, D., & Bottke, W. F. 2004. Detection of the Yarkovsky effect for main-belt asteroids. Icarus 170: 324–342.
4. Nesvorný, D et al. 2006. Karin cluster formation by asteroid impact. Icarus 183: 296–311.
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Asteroid groups and families