[meteorite-list] Asteroid Color Clans

From: almitt <almitt_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:06:13 2004
Message-ID: <3DC763FE.1CF94690_at_kconline.com>

Hi John,

I'll take a stab at this but Bernd really has great resources for answering this no
doubt better than I can. The topic that Bernd had started was on asteroid color clans
and that at least 90 percent of asteroids are associated with families (from
collisions in the past). No doubt the Vesta HED's are from chunks broken off from
Vesta in an impact and that have made their way into an orbit that upon further impact
has allowed meteoroids to end up in some of the kirkwood gaps where they can be
purbatrated into Earth crossing orbits. Yes they are from other sources but they
originated from the same source or asteroid. No doubt this is true for the other
related asteroid family groups and again the color clans that they are beginning to
piece together with the new research.

I don't know if we can say for sure or not if a certain meteorite is from a particular
asteroid chunk or fragment but there is very strong evidence to show the HED's are
indeed from Vesta and also a strong link of the H type chondrites to asteroid Hebe. I
don't think there is much doubt about the Mars type meteorites (SNC's) are from Mars
and the Lunar meteorites are from the moon as we have been there and have material to
compare to. With the color clans coming into play we can at least say that certain
meteorites are from certain families now.

On a related note Mar's moon Phobos is very similar to the CV3's like Allende but
there are also many other asteroids out there with that spectral match (could it be
the same clan?) I have always thought with the larger crater I see in the photos taken
by NASA that Phobos was a good candidate for that source material.

Another question or comment. Perhaps some of the meteorites of different classes
sample the same asteroid (or family, clan). We could have iron meteorites, pallasites
and chondrites or achondrites all from the same parent body but we are looking at
different depths of material all from the same parent body or asteroid family clan.
This is no doubt true of the meteorites we have from Vesta and shows material from
different depths. My best!

--AL

John Divelbiss wrote:

> Hi Al, Rob, Bernd and others,
>
> I think it is wonderful to think we can match types with asteroids that are
> labeled and watched.
>
> I have a question. Is it safe to say that what we are doing is matching
> spectrums of types with those same specturms for a given asteroid, but not
> necessarily committing to say that is probably from that asteroid. In other
> words, their maybe(must be) several to hundreds of a given type asteroid out
> there. And that one LL4 could come from one rock, and another from a
> different rock with the same spectrum on the opposite side of the belt. I
> maybe stating the obvious, but for instance I so often read that an HED is
> probably from the asteroid Vesta, when in truth it maybe from another one.
Received on Tue 05 Nov 2002 01:23:59 AM PST