2013 ST71 - A member of the Datura cluster ?

These 7 asteroids are already recognized as belonging to the Datura cluster:

• (1270) Datura
• (60151) 1999UZ6 
• (89309) 2001VN36 
• (90265) 2003CL5 
• (203370) 2001 WY35
• (215619) 2003 SQ168
• 2003 UD112

Is asteroid 2013 ST71  a member of the Datura cluster ?

At first glance, I would say yes: the orbit of 2013 ST71 is very similar to the orbit of (1270) Datura, but it is not clear to me if this happens by chance or not .


Let's look at Horizons Web -

(1270) Datura

Element	Value	Uncertainty (1-sigma)	Units
e	.207362426961996	6.897e-08
a	2.23509416609344	7.619e-09	AU
q	1.771619615323705	1.539e-07	AU
i	5.988581620229616	5.1796e-06	deg
node	97.85012324839816	6.7015e-05	deg
peri	258.8674632296458	6.7965e-05	deg
M	69.4456617884065	1.2739e-05	deg
tp	2456565.057541251396 (2013-Sep-29.55754125)	4.2797e-05	JED
period	1220.512310873357 3.34	6.2407e-06 1.709e-08	d yr
n	.294958106356499	1.5082e-09	deg/d
Q	2.698568716863174	9.1989e-09	AU

2013 ST71

Element Value Uncertainty (1-sigma)   Units  e .2072926241711973 2.4439e-07 a 2.235332639213504 3.0253e-08 AU q 1.771964670535408 5.4988e-07 AU i 5.98688637443826 1.0741e-05 deg node 97.99751181500383 0.00026181 deg peri 258.8943816441401 0.00026916 deg M 78.4852036132318 4.0622e-05 deg tp 2456534.368087665562 (2013-Aug-29.86808767) 0.00013895 JED period 1220.707649718649 3.34 2.4781e-05 6.785e-08 d yr n .2949109068686294 5.9869e-09 deg/d Q 2.698700607891598 3.6524e-08 AU

A few month ago, we also mentioned that another asteroid (338309) 2002 VR17 might be a member of the same cluster - if these findings are confirmed, the Datura cluster would have at least 9 recognized members.

At the end of this embedded PDF (a list of potential asteroid pairs to be confirmed / rejected), there is an entry for 2013 ST71:



Click on asteroid names to get more details from the AstDyS service.
Click on Asteroid1_Asteroid2 distance to see a graph showing how the distance between the two asteroids varied in the past according to a simulation performed with Mercury simulator.

Kind Regards,
Alessandro Odasso