Type: Poster 
Session: Posters (Wednesday & Thursday)
Author: Prachi Vaijanath Chavan

Abstract: Asteroid families play a major role in understanding the collisional processes in our Solar System. These processes influenced the initial conditions of the inner planets and may have delivered water and organic materials, aiding in the emergence of life on Earth. One particularly interesting group is the Pallas family, located in a region with a high inclination of 34.8 degrees. It consists of rare B-type asteroids, which make up 4% of the known asteroid population. The largest member, Pallas, exhibits a bluer color than the Sun and shows a distinctive 3 μm absorption feature associated with hydrated minerals. Our ongoing research is focused on characterizing this family to study its mineralogy and explore correlations among their physical properties. We found that the spectra of the majority of the family members match with the CI and CM meteorites, the most primitive solar system materials. Thus far, our spectroscopic study has been confined to bright (V < 17.5) and large (D ~ 6 km) asteroids. Despite the limited dataset, we have already identified significant differences between larger members and their smaller counterparts. Compared to previous surveys, the LSST survey will push the limiting magnitude by at least four orders of magnitude, allowing us to examine asteroids down to the sub-kilometer level. We will not only continue our study on the Pallas family by including a few hundred-meter-sized members but also extend similar analyses to other asteroid families. I will present our new findings on the Pallas family with mineralogical insights, dynamical interpretations of outliers, and discuss the significance of integrating LSST’s new data into our asteroid family studies.