On the young family of 18777 Hobson

Abstract Asteroid families are groups of minor planets that have a common origin in collisional events. Young asteroid families are of special interest. Here we report on our study of a compact and young asteroid family related to the minor planet 18777 Hobson. This family consists of at least 5 members. The two largest members (18777 Hobson and 57738 (2001 UZ160)) are comparable in size. The recent discovery of asteroid 436620 (2011 LF12) is very important because it is still the most stable object in the cluster. We also considered three other possible members, but their status could only be confirmed when better orbits are will be obtained. Using time-backwards numerical integration, we estimated the age of this family to be 365 ±  67 kyrs. In the future, improvement of our age estimation of the Hobson family will be possible after a detailed study of non-gravitational forces acting on each member of the family and resonance-related perturbation.