Related papers: The Active Asteroids
In 2010 Jewitt and Li published a paper examining the behavior of comet-asteroid transition object 3200 Phaethon, arguing it was asteroid-like in its behavior throughout most of its orbit, but that near its perihelion, at a distance of only…
Asteroids and comets dissipate energy when they rotate about the axis different from the axis of the maximal moment of inertia. We show that the most efficient internal relaxation happens at the double frequency of body's tumbling.…
We present Hubble Space Telescope observations of active asteroid P/2020 O1 taken to examine its development for a year after perihelion. We find that the mass loss peaks <~1 kg/s in 2020 August and then declines to nearly zero over four…
We present Hubble Space Telescope observations of active asteroid 313P/Gibbs (formerly P/2014 S4) taken over the five month interval from 2014 October to 2015 March. This object has been recurrently active near perihelion (at 2.4 AU) in two…
Conventional meteoroid theory assumes that the dominant mode of ablation is by evaporation following intense heating during atmospheric flight. In this paper we consider the question of whether sputtering may provide an alternative…
We present observations and models of the dust environment of activated asteroid P/2013 P5 (PANSTARRS). The object displayed a complex morphology during the observations, with the presence of multiple tails. We combined our own…
Asteroids are leftover pieces from the era of planet formation that help us understand conditions in the early Solar System. Unlike larger planetary bodies that were subject to global thermal modification during and subsequent to their…
The active asteroid 311P is one of the two targets of a planned Chinese asteroid exploration mission Tianwen-2. During 2013, 311P experienced several mass-loss events and exhibited multiple comet-like tails. Here we analyze the morphology…
We present a study of planet-crossing asteroid (3200) Phaethon at three successive perihelia in 2009, 2010 and 2012, using the NASA STEREO spacecraft. Phaethon is clearly detected in 2009 and 2012, but not in 2010. In both former years,…
We revisited a mass ejection phenomenon that occurred in asteroid P/2010 A2 in terms of the dynamical properties of the dust particles and large fragments. We constructed a model assuming anisotropic ejection within a solid cone-shaped jet…
Our knowledge of main-belt comets (MBCs), which exhibit comet-like activity likely due to the sublimation of volatile ices, yet orbit in the main asteroid belt, has increased greatly since the discovery of the first known MBC,…
Many asteroids are rubble piles with irregular shapes. While the irregular shapes of large asteroids may be attributed to collisional events, those of small asteroids may result from not only impact events but also rotationally induced…
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…
Recent models of the near-Earth asteroid population show that asteroids must be super-catastrophically destroyed when they evolve to orbits with perihelion passages well inside of Mercury's orbit. The heliocentric distances at which the…
Asteroids and meteorites provide key evidence on the formation of planetesimals in the Solar System. Asteroids are traditionally thought to form in a bottom-up process by coagulation within a population of initially km-scale planetesimals.…
A considerable amount of information regarding the processes that occurred during the accretion of the early planetesimals is still present among the small bodies of our solar system. A review of our current knowledge of the density of…
We present initial observations of the newly-discovered active asteroid 313P/Gibbs (formerly P/2014 S4), taken to characterize its nucleus and comet-like activity. The central object has a radius $\sim$0.5 km (geometric albedo 0.05…
The asteroid (3200) Phaethon is widely recognized as the parent of the Geminid meteoroid stream. However, it has never shown evidence for on-going mass loss or for any form of comet-like activity that would indicate the continued…
More than a half of asteroids in the main belt have irregular shapes with the ratios of the minor to major axis lengths less than 0.6. One of the mechanisms to create such shapes is collisions between asteroids. The relationship between…
Splitting of the nuclei of comets into multiple components has been frequently observed but, to date, no main-belt asteroid has been observed to break-up. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, we find that main-belt asteroid P/2013 R3 consists…