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Reflections from objects in Earth orbit can produce sub-second, star-like optical flashes similar to astrophysical transients. Reflections have historically caused false alarms for transient surveys, but the population has not been…
Deflecting an asteroid from an Earth impact trajectory requires only small velocity changes, typically of the order of microns per second, if done many years ahead of time. For this, a highly precise method of determining the need,…
Microlensing is the most promising method to study the statistical frequency of extra-solar planets orbiting typical (random) stars in the Milky Way, even those several kiloparsecs from Earth. The lensing zone corresponds to orbital…
The nature and physical properties of asteroids, in particular those orbiting in the near-Earth space, are of scientific interest and practical importance. Exoplanet surveys can be excellent resources to detect asteroids, both already known…
Asteroids can be eclipsed by other bodies in the Solar System, but no direct observation of an asteroid eclipse has been reported to date. We describe a statistical method to predict an eclipse for an asteroid based on the analysis of the…
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 introduce a new method of searching for and characterizing extra-solar planets. We show that by monitoring the center-of-light motion of microlensing alerts using the next generation of high precision astrometric instruments the…
The statistical distribution of the masses of planets about stars between the Sun and the center of the galaxy is constrained to within a factor of three by an intensive search for planets during microlensing events. Projected separations…
Extreme Scattering Events are radio-wave lensing events caused by AU-sized concentrations of ionised gas. Although they were discovered more than a decade ago we still have no clear picture of the physical nature of the lenses. To…
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…
Thermal infrared observations are the most effective way to measure asteroid diameter and albedo for a large number of near-Earth objects. Major surveys like NEOWISE, NEOSurvey, ExploreNEOs, and NEOLegacy find a small fraction of high…
Large-area surveys operating at mid-infrared wavelengths have proven to be a valuable means of discovering and characterizing minor planets. Through the use of radiometric models, it is possible to derive physical properties such as…
A microlensing lensing zone refers to the range of planet-star separations where the probability of detecting a planetary signal is high. Its conventional definition as the range between $\sim 0.6$ and 1.6 Einstein radii of the primary lens…
Observational searches for asteroids orbiting near Earth's triangular Lagrange points face unique obstacles. A population of such asteroids would occupy a large projected area on the sky (possibly hundreds of square degrees) and is not…
As a new kind of radio transient sources detected at $\sim 1.4$ GHz, fast radio bursts are specially characterized by their short durations and high intensities. Although only ten events are detected so far, fast radio bursts may actually…
Although gravitational waves only interact weakly with matter, their propagation is affected by a gravitational potential. If a gravitational wave source is eclipsed by a star, measuring these perturbations provides a way to directly…
If a source star is gravitationally microlensed by a multiple lens system, the resulting light curve can have significant deviations from the standard form of a single lens event. The chance to produce significant deviations becomes…
The Einstein rings and proper motions of nearby stars tend to be large. Thus, every year some foreground stars within a few hundred parsecs of Earth induce gravitational lensing events in background stars. In some of these cases, the events…
The continuing monitoring and surveying of the nearby space to detect Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) are essential because of the threats that this kind of objects impose on the future of our planet. We need more…
Astrometry has long been a promising technique for exoplanet detection. At the theoretical limits, astrometry would allow for the detection of smaller planets than previously seen by current exoplanet search methods, but stellar activity…