Related papers: Tails of a Recent Comet
Small bodies in the solar system are conventionally classified into asteroids and comets. However, it is recently found that a small number of objects can exhibit properties of both asteroids and comets. Some are more consistent with…
In studies of the oldest solar system bodies - comets and asteroids - it is their fragments - meteoroids - that provide the most accessible planetary material for detailed laboratory analysis in the form of dust particles or meteorites.…
Small bodies exist in distinct populations within their planetary systems. These reservoir populations hold a range of compositions, which to first order are dependent on formation location relative to their star. We provide a general…
The Oort Cloud, the Kuiper Belt and the Scattered Disk are dynamically distinct populations of small bodies evolving in the outer regions of the Solar System. Whereas their collisional activity is now quiet, gravitational interactions with…
The similar orbital distances and detection rates of debris disks and the prominent rings observed in protoplanetary disks suggest a potential connection between these structures. We explore this connection with new calculations that follow…
Close-in giant planets are thought to have formed in the cold outer regions of planetary systems and migrated inward, passing through the orbital parameter space occupied by the terrestrial planets in our own Solar System. We present…
Extreme debris discs (EDDs) are bright and warm circumstellar dusty structures around main sequence stars. They may represent the outcome of giant collisions occuring in the terrestrial region between large planetesimals or planetary…
Several stars show deep transits consistent with discs of roughly 1 Solar radius seen at moderate inclinations, likely surrounding planets on eccentric orbits. We show that this configuration arises naturally as a result of planet-planet…
As comets journey into the inner solar system, they deliver particulates and volatile gases into their comae that reveal the most primitive materials in the solar system. Cometary dust particles provide crucial information for assessing the…
Circumstellar debris disks are the extrasolar analogues of the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt. They consist of comets and leftover planetesimals that continuously collide and produce circumstellar dust that can be observed as infrared…
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 presence of highly siderophile elements in Earth's mantle indicates that a small percentage of Earth's mass was delivered after the last giant impact in a stage of 'late accretion.' There is ongoing debate about the nature of…
Comets and small planetesimals are believed to contain primordial building blocks in the form of millimeter to centimeter sized pebbles. One of the viable growing mechanisms to form these small bodies is through the streaming instability…
Observations in the past decade have revealed extrasolar planets with a wide range of orbital semimajor axes and eccentricities. Based on the present understanding of planet formation via core accretion and oligarchic growth, we expect that…
Large and deep depressions, also known as pits, are observed at the surface of all Jupiter Family Comets (JFCs) imaged by spacecraft missions. They offer the opportunity to glimpse into sub-surface characteristics of comet nuclei, and study…
Whenever a freely spinning body is found in a complex rotational state, this means that either the body is a recent victim of an impact or a tidal interaction, or is a fragment of a recently disrupted progenitor. Another factor (relevant…
Massive cores of the giant planets are thought to have formed in a gas disk by accretion of pebble-size particles whose accretional cross-section is enhanced by aerodynamic gas drag [1][2]. A commonly held view is that the terrestrial…
The orbital regime of a terrestrial planet plays a significant role in shaping its atmospheric dynamics, climate, and hence potential habitability. The orbit is also likely to play a role in shaping the response of a planetary atmosphere to…
All the four giant planets in our Solar System have rings, but their characteristics are very different. The rings consist of a number of small particles, although individual particles have not been directly imaged. Near the central planet,…
The rotational mass loss has been realized to be a prevalent mechanism to produce low-speed debris near the asteroid, and the size composition of the asteroid's surface regolith has been closely measured by in situ explorations. However,…