TheGefion family (FIN:516; adj.Gefionian; also known as theCeres family or theMinerva family) is anasteroid family located in the intermediateasteroid belt between 2.74 and 2.82 AU atinclinations of 7.4° to 10.5°. The family ofS-type asteroids is named after1272 Gefion and consists of more than 2,500 known members. It had previously been known as the Ceres family. It is still known as Minerva family, named after then thought parent body93 Minerva, until it was identified to be aninterloper into its own family.^[1]

The members haveproper orbital elements in the approximate ranges^[2]

At the presentepoch, the range ofosculatingorbital elements of these core members is

The namesake is1272 Gefion. The family is fairly large, e.g. the Zappala 1995 analysis found about a hundred core members. A search of a recent proper element database^[3] found 766 objects (about 0.8% of the total) lying within the region defined by the first table above.

2631 Zhejiang has a diameter of 34 km, and is the largest core member whose diameter has been reliably estimated, although2911 Miahelena is brighter, and would have a rough diameter of about 47 km, given the same (very low) albedo of 0.025.

Until recently, this family was known as the Ceres family (adj.Cererean) or the Minerva family (adj.Minervian) after1 Ceres (the largest asteroid) or93 Minerva. However, spectroscopic analyses showed that these largest members were in factinterlopers in their own family,^[4] having a differentspectral class from the bulk of the members. Other known interlopers are255 Oppavia,374 Burgundia,2507 Bobone, and2559 Svoboda.^[5] This left the fairly minor asteroid1272 Gefion as the lowest-numbered member.

This is a list of the known family members, without the above-mentioned interlopers.^[6]

• Gefion asteroids
• Asteroid groups and families

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