Related papers: Asteroid 2007 WD5 will not impact Mars on January …
The spin parameter of the black hole in M33 X-7 has recently been measured to be a*=0.77+-0.05 (Liu et al. 2008). It has been proposed that the spin of the 15.65 M_sun black hole is natal. We show that this is not a viable evolutionary path…
Based on telescopic observations of Jupiter-family comets (JFCs), there is predicted to be a paucity of objects at sub-kilometre sizes. However, several bright fireballs and some meteorites have been tenuously linked to the JFC population,…
The 99942 Apophis close encounter with Earth in 2029 may provide information about asteroid's physical characteristics and measurements of Earth's effects on the asteroid surface. In this work, we analysed the surface and the nearby…
We observed the near-Earth asteroid 2008 EV5 with the Arecibo and Goldstone planetary radars and the Very Long Baseline Array during December 2008. EV5 rotates retrograde and its overall shape is a 400 /pm 50 m oblate spheroid. The most…
It is customarily assumed that Earth-striking meteoroids are completely random, and that all the impacts must be interpreted as uncorrelated events distributed according to Poisson statistics. If this is correct, their impact dates must be…
Short-arc orbit determination is crucial when an asteroid is first discovered. In these cases usually the observations are so few that the differential correction procedure may not converge. We have developed an initial orbit computation…
Potentially impacting asteroids were analysed for their impact risk on the Earth. To this end, the Asteroid Risk Mitigation Optimization and Research (ARMOR) tool is currently being developed. The tool's modules are described and their…
The Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) under development by NASA is being planned to collect a multi-meter boulder from a near-Earth asteroid (NEA), and to bring it to the cis-lunar space in the mid-2020's for future study and exploitation by…
In this paper we present the observational campaign carried out at ESO NTT and VLT in April and May 2006 to investigate the nature and the structure of the Near Earth Object (144898) 2004 VD17. In spite of a great quantity of dynamical…
We report on our search for genetically related asteroids amongst the near-Earth object (NEO) population - families of NEOs akin to the well known main belt asteroid families. We used the technique proposed by Fu et al. (2005) supplemented…
Asteroidal impact threats to the Earth will be predicted a century or more in advance. Changing an asteroid's albedo changes the force of Solar radiation on it, and hence its orbit. Albedo may be changed by applying a thin ($\sim 0.1\,\mu$)…
The photometric solutions of NW Aps reveal that it is a low mass ratio ($q = 0.086$) contact binary system. Investigation of orbital period shows that its orbital period is increasing continuously at a rate of…
The recycled pulsar PSR J2222-0137 is one of the closest known neutron stars, with a parallax distance of $267_{-0.9}^{+1.2}\,$pc and an edge-on orbit. We measure the Shapiro delay in the system through pulsar timing with the Green Bank…
The potentially hazardous asteroid (101955) 1999 RQ36 has the possibility of collision with the Earth in the latter half of the 22nd century, well beyond the traditional 100-year time horizon for routine impact monitoring. The probabilities…
Large or even medium sized asteroids impacting the Earth can cause damage on a global scale. Existing and planned concepts for finding near-Earth objects (NEOs) with diameter of 140 m or larger would take ~15-20 years of observation to find…
We present the results of a deep (15 ~< r ~< 23), 20 night survey for transiting planets in the intermediate age open cluster M37 (NGC 2099) using the Megacam wide-field mosaic CCD camera on the 6.5m MMT. We do not detect any transiting…
We report a statistically significant detection of nongravitational acceleration on the sub-kilometer near-Earth asteroid (523599) 2003 RM. Due to its orbit, 2003 RM experiences favorable observing apparitions every 5 years. Thus, since its…
We present a physical model and spin-state analysis of the potentially hazardous asteroid (23187) 2000 PN9. As part of a long-term campaign to make direct detections of the YORP effect, we collected optical lightcurves of the asteroid…
We have obtained extensive photometric observations of the polluted white dwarf WD 1145+017 which has been reported to be transited by at least one, and perhaps several, large asteroids (or, planetesimals) with dust emission. We have…
The intensity and effects of early impact bombardment on the major satellites of the giant planets during an episode of giant planet migration is still poorly known. We use a combination of dynamical N-body and Monte Carlo simulations to…