*** Welcome to piglix ***

490 Veritas

490 Veritas
Discovery
Discovered by Max Wolf
Discovery site Heidelberg Obs.
Discovery date 3 September 1902
Designations
1902 JP
main-belt, Veritas family
Orbital characteristics
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)
Jupiter Tisserand parameter 3.175
Physical characteristics
Dimensions 110.96 ± 3.80 km
115.55±5.5 km
Mass (5.99 ± 2.23) × 1018 kg
Mean density
8.37 ± 3.23 g/cm3
7.930 h (0.3304 d)
0.0622±0.006
8.53, 8.32

490 Veritas (/ˈvɛrtəs/ VERR-ə-təs) is a large 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 on September 3, 1902 at Heidelberg.

At 115 and 125 km in diameter, Veritas and 92 Undina are the largest of the 300-strong Veritas family of asteroids. Apparently there is a whole Veritas family of asteroids including 490 Veritas, 844 Leontina, 1086 Nata, 2428 Kamenyar, 2934 Aristophanes, 5592 Oshima, and 7231 Porco and some other unnamed asteroids. 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 some 8 million years ago. Veritas and Undina would have been the largest fragments of that collision.

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.


...
Wikipedia

...