What is Flora family?
[[Image:Family Flora of asteroids.jpg|thumb|right|Flora family]] The '''Flora family''' of asteroids is a big group of [[S-type asteroid|S-type]] [[asteroid]]s in the closer part of the [[asteroid belt|main belt]], whose origin and properties are not well understood right now. About 4-5% of all main belt asteroids belong to this family. Because of its poorly defined edges, and the location of Flora itself near the edge, this asteroid group has also sometimes been called the '''Ariadne family''', when Flora did not make it into the group during an analysis (e.g. the WAM analysis by Zappala 1995). ==Characteristics== The biggest member is [[8 Flora]], which mesures 140 km in [[diameter]], and takes up about 80% of the total family mass. Nevertheless, the parent body was almost for sure destroyed by the impact/s that made the family, and Flora is probably a gravitational aggregate of most of the pieces.{{Fact|date=February 2007}} [[43 Ariadne]] makes up much of the remaining mass (about a further 9%, with the remaining family members being fairly small, below 30 km in diameter. ==Unrelated asteroids== Because of the high background density of asteroids in this part of space, one might expect that a great number of asteroids unrelated to the collision that made the family would be present. However, few have been found. This is because unrelated asteroids are hard to distinguish from family members because the family is of the same [[asteroid spectral types|spectral type]] ([[S-type asteroid|S]]) that dominates the closer main belt overall. The few unrelated asteroids that have been found are all small (Florczak ''et al.'' 1998, and also by inspection of the [http://www.psi.edu/pds/archive/tax.html PDS asteroid taxonomy data set] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20031119173516/http://www.psi.edu/pds/archive/tax.html |date=2003-11-19 }} for non S-type members.) They include [[298 Baptistina]], [[422 Berolina]], [[2093 Genichesk]], [[2259 Sofievka]] (the biggest, with a 21 km diameter), [[2952 Liliputia]], [[35