Mysterious Group of Outcast Asteroids Tracked with NASA's NEOWISE

NASA is tracking a mysterious group of asteroid outcasts with NEOWISE. They've spotted a family of space rocks near the asteroid-rich abyss between Mars and Jupiter in order to learn a bit more about them.

The asteroids are distributed at the outer edge of the asteroid belt and are called the Euphrosynes. They have an unusual orbital path that juts well above the ecliptic, the equator of the solar system. The asteroid after which they are named, Euphrosyne, is about 156 miles across and is one of the 10 largest asteroids in the main belt. Current-day Euphrosyne is thought to be a remnant of a massive collision about 700 million years ago that formed the family of smaller asteroids bearing its name.

In this latest study, the researchers used the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) to look at these unusual asteroids to learn more about Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and their potential threat to Earth.

So what did they find? The researchers believe the Euphrosynes may be the source of some of the dark NEOs found to be on long, highly inclined orbits. Through gravitational interactions with Saturn, Euphrosyne asteroids can evolve into NEOs over timescales of millions of years.

"The Euphrosynes have a gentle resonance with the orbit of Saturn that slowly moves these objects, eventually turning some of them into NEOs," said Joseph Masiero, JPL's lead scientist, in a news release. "This particular gravitational resonance tends to push some of the larger fragments of the Euphrosyne family into near-Earth space."

By studying the Euphrosyne family asteroids, the researchers have been able to measure their sizes and the amount of solar energy they reflect. The researchers found that they're good candidates for some of the dark NEOs that the NEOWISE telescope detects.

The findings are important for better understanding NEOs and could help researchers track these objects a bit better in the future.

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