| Discovery | |
|---|---|
| Discovered by | Max Wolf |
| Discovery site | Heidelberg Obs. |
| Discovery date | 3 September 1902 |
| Designations | |
| (490) Veritas | |
| Pronunciation | /ˈvɛrɪtæs/[1] |
| 1902 JP | |
| main-belt · (outer) Veritas[2] | |
| Adjectives | Veritasian[3] |
| Orbital characteristics[4] | |
| Epoch 31 July 2016 (JD 2457600.5) | |
| Uncertainty parameter 0 | |
| Observation arc | 113.37 yr (41409 d) |
| Aphelion | 3.4715 AU (519.33 Gm) |
| Perihelion | 2.8719 AU (429.63 Gm) |
| 3.1717 AU (474.48 Gm) | |
| Eccentricity | 0.094527 |
| 5.65yr (2063.2d) | |
| 31.094° | |
| 0° 10m 28.164s / day | |
| Inclination | 9.2809° |
| 178.335° | |
| 194.390° | |
| Earth MOID | 1.87147 AU (279.968 Gm) |
| Jupiter MOID | 1.98443 AU (296.867 Gm) |
| TJupiter | 3.175 |
| Physical characteristics | |
| Dimensions | 110.96 ± 3.80 km[5] 115.55±5.5 km[4] |
| Mass | (5.99 ± 2.23) × 1018 kg[5] |
Meandensity | 8.37 ± 3.23 g/cm3[5] |
| 7.930 h (0.3304 d) | |
| 0.0622±0.006 | |
| 8.53,[6] 8.32[4] | |
490 Veritas is a carbonaceous Veritasianasteroid, which may have been involved in one of the more massive asteroid-asteroid collisions of the past 100 million years. It was discovered by German astronomerMax Wolf atHeidelberg Observatory on 3 September 1902.
With a diameter of more than 100 kilometers, Veritas is the largest member and namesake of theVeritas family, a mid-sizedasteroid family of carbonaceous asteroids in theouter main-belt, that formed recently approximately8.5±0.5 million years ago.[2][7]: 8, 23 David Nesvorný of theSouthwest Research Institute inBoulder traced the orbits of these bodies back in time, and calculated that they formed in a collision of a body at least 150 km in diameter with a smaller asteroid. Veritas and Undina would have been the largest fragments of that collision which caused a "late Miocene dust shower". The family consists of more than a thousand known members including1086 Nata,2428 Kamenyar and2934 Aristophanes.
Substantiating Nesvorný's estimate,Kenneth Farleyet al. found evidence in sea-floor sediments of a fourfold increase in the amount ofcosmic dust reaching Earth's surface, which began 8.2 million years ago and tapered off over the next million and a half years. This is one of the largest increases in dust deposits of the past 100 million years.[8]
The suspected Veritas collision would have been too far fromJupiter for the fragments to have been slung into a collision course with Earth. However,solar radiation would have caused the resulting dust to drift inward to Earth orbit over a time span consistent with the record of dust in theocean sediment.
Today continuing collisions among Veritas-family asteroids are estimated to send five thousand tons of cosmic dust to Earth each year, 15% of the total.
490 Veritas has been observed tooccult 13 stars between 2006 and 2023.
