Asteroid pairs: method validation and new candidates

Institute of Astronomy, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, 35 Sumska Str., Kharkiv 61022, Ukraine
e-mail: ihor.kyrylenko@karazin.ua

Received: 15 January 2021
Accepted: 17 July 2021

Abstract

Context. An asteroid pair can be described as two asteroids with very similar heliocentric orbits that are genetically related but not gravitationally bound. They can be produced by asteroid collisions or rotational fission. Although over 200 asteroid pairs are known, many more remain to be identified, especially among the newly discovered asteroids.

Aims. The purpose of our work is to find new asteroid pairs in the inner part of the main belt with a new pipeline for asteroid pair search, and to validate the pipeline on a sample of known asteroid pairs.

Methods. Initially, we selected pair candidates in the five-dimensional space of osculating orbital elements. Then the candidates were confirmed using numerical modeling with the backtrack integration of their orbits, including the perturbations from the largest main-belt asteroids and the influence of the non-gravitational Yarkovsky effect.

Results. We performed a survey of the inner part of the main belt and found ten new probable asteroid pairs. Their estimated formation ages lie between 30 and 400 kyr. In addition, our pipeline was tested on a sample of 17 known pairs, and our age estimates agree with those indicated in the literature in most of the cases.