Related papers: The activity of Main Belt comets
We simulate the stresses induced by temperature changes in a putative hard layer near the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov--Gerasimenko with a thermo-viscoelastic model. Such a layer could be formed by the recondensation or sintering of water…
Comets contain abundant amounts of organic and inorganic species. Many of the volatile molecules in comets have also been observed in the interstellar medium and some of them even with similar relative abundances, indicating formation under…
Previous studies of cometary impacts in the outer Solar System used the spatial distribution of ecliptic comets (ECs) from dynamical models that assumed ECs began on low-inclination orbits (<5 deg) in the Kuiper belt. In reality, the source…
The asteroid belt was dynamically shaped during and after planet formation. Despite representing a broad ring of stable orbits, the belt contains less than one one-thousandth of an Earth mass. The asteroid orbits are dynamically excited…
The origin of the orbital structure of the cold component of the Kuiper belt is still a hot subject of investigation. Several features of the solar system suggest that the giant planets underwent a phase of global dynamical instability, but…
The frequency of heating events in the corona is an important constraint on the coronal heating mechanisms. Observations indicate that the intensities and velocities measured in active region cores are effectively steady, suggesting that…
Kuiper-like belts of planetesimals orbiting stars other than the Sun are most commonly detected from the thermal emission of small dust produced in collisions. Emission from gas, most notably CO, highlights the cometary nature of these…
We investigate the melt production of planetary impacts as a function of planet size ($R/R_\mathrm{Earth}$=0.1-1.5), impactor size ($L$=1-1000 km), and core size ratio ($R_\mathrm{core}/R$=0.2-0.8) using a combination of parameterized…
Anisotropic outgassing from comets exerts a torque sufficient to rapidly change the angular momentum of the nucleus, potentially leading to rotational instability. Here, we use empirical measures of spin changes in a sample of comets to…
Aims. Understanding the activity is vital for deciphering the structure, formation, and evolution of comets. We investigate models of cometary activity by comparing them to the dynamics of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Methods. We matched…
The dynamical evolution of Classical Kuiper Belt Objects (CKBOs) divides into two parts, according to the secular theory of test particle orbits. The first part is a forced oscillation driven by the planets, while the second part is a free…
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…
Recent observations of gaps and non-axisymmetric features in the dust distributions of transition disks have been interpreted as evidence of embedded massive protoplanets. However, comparing the predictions of planet-disk interaction models…
Activity of most comets near the Sun is dominated by sublimation of frozen water, the most abundant ice in comets. Some comets, however, are active well beyond the water-ice sublimation limit of ~3 AU. Three bodies dominate the…
To simulate the heated exterior of a meteorite, we impact a granular bed with melted tin. The morphology of tin remnant and crater is found to be sensitive to the temperature and solidification of tin. By employing deep learning and…
The scattering of small bodies by planets is an important dynamical process in planetary systems. We present an analytical model to describe this process using the simplifying assumption that each particle's dynamics is dominated by a…
Comets hold the key to the understanding of our solar system, its formation and its evolution, and to the fundamental plasma processes at work both in it and beyond it. A comet nucleus emits gas as it is heated by the sunlight. The gas…
Comets are made of volatile and refractory material and naturally experience various degrees of sublimation as they orbit around the Sun. This gas release, accompanied by dust, represents what is traditionally described as activity.…
To date, at least three comets -- 2I/Borisov, C/2016 R2 (PanSTARRS), and C/2009 P1 (Garradd) -- have been observed to have unusually high CO concentrations compared to water. We attempt to explain these observations by modeling the effect…
Even simple active systems can show a plethora of intriguing phenomena and often we find complexity were we would have expected simplicity. One striking example is the occurrence of a quiescent or absorbing state with frozen fluctuations…