Revising the age for the Baptistina asteroid family using WISE/NEOWISE data
Abstract
We have used numerical routines to model the evolution of a simulated Baptistina family to constrain its age in light of new measurements of the diameters and albedos of family members from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. We also investigate the effect of varying the assumed physical and orbital parameters on the best-fitting age. We find that the physically allowed range of assumed values for the density and thermal conductivity induces a large uncertainty in the rate of evolution. When realistic uncertainties in the family members' physical parameters are taken into account we find the best-fitting age can fall anywhere in the range of 140-320 Myr. Without more information on the physical properties of the family members it is difficult to place a more firm constraint on Baptistina's age.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1209.1430,
title = {Revising the age for the Baptistina asteroid family using WISE/NEOWISE data},
author = {Joseph R. Masiero and A. K. Mainzer and T. Grav and J. M. Bauer and R. Jedicke},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.1430},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
27 pages, 16 figures, accepted to ApJ