Asteroid Families

A 3D plot of asteroid families by proper elements and colors implemented with d3.js. Shows main belt asteroids grouped naturally by their proper orbital elements semi major axis (a_p), inclination (sin i_p) and eccentricity (e_p). The color coding is from diagnostic colors indicative of composition astar = 0.89 * (g - r) + 0.45 * (r - i) - 0.57 and i - z, calculated from SDSS filter bands u, g, r, i, z (See paper linked below for details).

Files

CSV data files

• ast-proper.csv Comma separated list of proper elements a,e,i and colors for all asteroids from the SDSS Moving Objects Catalog that have proper elements linked from the ASTORB Database
• ast-proper.csv Same list as above, limited to asteroids brighter than absolute magnitude H 14
• families.csv Asteroid families with name, median proper elements and SDSS colors from Table 2 in Parker et al. The Size Distributions of Asteroid Families in the SDSS Moving Object Catalog 4 (http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3762)

Thanks to Mike Bostock for D3.js

Released under BSD License