Hecuba-gap asteroid

A Hecuba-gap asteroid is a member of a dynamical group of resonant asteroids located in the Hecuba gap at 3.27 AU – one of the largest Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt, which is considered the borderline separating the outer main belt asteroids from the Cybeles. A Hecuba-gap asteroid stays in a 2:1 mean motion resonance with the gas giant Jupiter, which may gradually perturbe its orbits over a long period until it either intersect with the orbit of Mars or Jupiter itself. Depending on the dynamical stability of an asteroid's orbit in the Hecuba gap, three subgroups have been proposed. These are the marginally unstable Griqua asteroids, with an estimated lifetime of more than 100 million years, the stable Zhongguo asteroids (more than 500 million or even 1 billion years), and an unnamed, strongly unstable population of asteroids with a dynamical lifetime of less than 70 million years.

Moving further out the Solar System, the asteroids in the Hecuba gap are followed by the resonant Cybeles (7:4), Hildas (3:2), Thules (4:3) and Jupiter trojans (1:1).