Related papers: The Distribution of Basaltic Asteroids in the Main…
Due to the high-precision nature of the ASTROD (Astrodynamical Space Test of Relativity using Optical Devices) mission concept, the asteroid perturbations on the ASTROD spacecraft is crucial. These perturbations need to be modelled and…
Observations of asteroid 4 Vesta by NASA's Dawn spacecraft are interesting because its surface has the largest range of albedo, color and composition of any other asteroid visited by spacecraft to date. These hemispherical and rotational…
VISTA Variables in the V\'{\i}a L\'actea (VVV) is one of the six ESO Public Surveys operating on the new 4-meter Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA). VVV is scanning the Milky Way bulge and an adjacent section of the…
From 1996 to 2015 sixteen main belt asteroids were discovered exhibiting cometary activity (less than one per year), all of them during searches at the telescope. In this work we will explore another way to discover them. We reduced 192016…
The recent years have witnessed a carnival of discoveries in the Outer Solar System. Here we provide evidence from numerical simulations of orbital stability to suggest the possible existence of two long lived belts of primordial…
In order to fully understand the shapes of asteroids families in the 3-dimensional space of the proper elements $(a_{\rm p}, e_{\rm p}, \sin I_{\rm p})$ it is necessary to compare observed asteroids with N-body simulations. To this point,…
We present evidence, via a large survey of 191 new spectra along with previously-published spectra, of a divide in the 3-$\mu$m spectral properties of the low-albedo asteroid population. One group ("Sharp-types" or ST, with band centers $<$…
Most main-belt asteroids are primitive rock and metal bodies in orbit about the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Disruption, through high velocity collisions or rotational spin-up, is believed to be the primary mechanism for the production and…
The asteroid belt is a unique source of information on some of the most important questions facing solar system science. These questions include the sizes, numbers, types and orbital distributions of the planetesimals that formed the…
We present reflected light spectral observations from 0.4 to 2.5 micron of 24 asteroids chosen from the population of asteroids initially classified as Tholen X-type objects (Tholen, 1984). The X complex in the Tholen taxonomy comprises the…
Asteroid (7) Iris is an ideal target for disk-resolved imaging owing to its brightness (V$\sim$7-8) and large angular size of 0.33 arcsec during its apparitions. Iris is believed to belong to the category of large unfragmented asteroids…
In the context of charge-coupled devices (CCDs), the ultraviolet (UV) region has mostly remained unexplored after the 1990s. Gaia DR3 offers the community a unique opportunity to explore tens of thousands of asteroids in the near-UV as a…
In this work we study the link between the evolution of the internal structure of Vesta and thermal heating due to 26Al and 60Fe and long-lived radionuclides, taking into account the chemical differentiation of the body and the affinity of…
Meteor spectroscopy presents new opportunities for investigating the diversity of small Solar System bodies and capturing the real distribution of present material types. We analyze 180 higher-resolution meteor spectra from the All-sky…
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will be a ground-based, optical, all-sky, rapid cadence survey project with tremendous potential for discovering and characterizing asteroids. With LSST's large 6.5m diameter primary mirror, a wide…
The asteroid belt is the leftover of the original planetesimal population in the inner solar system. However, currently the asteroids have orbits with all possible values of eccentricities and inclinations compatible with long-term…
The asteroid belt contains less than a thousandth of Earth's mass and is radially segregated, with S-types dominating the inner belt and C-types the outer belt. It is generally assumed that the belt formed with far more mass and was later…
We report follow-up observations of 477 program Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) using nine telescopes of the EURONEAR network having apertures between 0.3 and 4.2 m. Adding these NEAs to our previous results we now count 739 program NEAs…
Aims. The aim of our study is to obtain the near-ultraviolet to visible (NUV-VIS, 0.35 - 0.95 micron) reflectance spectra of primitive asteroids with a focus on members of the Themis and Polana-Eulalia complex families. This…
No less than 15% of large (diameter greater than 140 km) asteroids have satellites. The commonly accepted mechanism for their formation is post-impact reaccumulation. However, the detailed physical and dynamical properties of these systems…