Related papers: Reconstructing the Chelyabinsk event: pre-impact o…
We discuss a hypothetical existential threat from a 10 km diameter bolide discovered 6 months prior to impact with one case being a comet and the other being an asteroid. We show that an extension of our work on bolide fragmentation using…
We present our shape and rotational characterization of four near-Earth asteroids observed as part of the Visible NEAs Observations Survey. This work includes 61 new light curves obtained between 2020 June and 2024 September for asteroids…
Taurid meteor shower produces prolonged but usually low activity every October and November. In some years, however, the activity is significantly enhanced. Previous studies based on long-term activity statistics concluded that the…
The mineralogy and physical properties of Chelyabinsk meteorites (fall, February 15, 2013) are presented. Three types of meteorite material are present, described as the light-colored, dark-colored, and impact-melt lithologies. All are of…
Tumbling asteroids belong to a small group of objects, whose angular velocity vector is unaligned with any of its principal axes of inertia. This leads to challenging efforts to model the trajectory of any spacecraft designed to orbit these…
Among the near-Earth object (NEO) population there are comets and active asteroids which are sources of fragments that initially move together; in addition, some NEOs follow orbits temporarily trapped in a web of secular resonances. These…
The Golden (British Columbia, Canada) meteorite fall occurred on Oct 4, 2021 at 0534 UT with the first recovered fragment (1.3 kg) landing on an occupied bed. The meteorite is an unbrecciated, low-shock (S2) ordinary chondrite of…
The aim of the study was to discover remnants of the 1908 Tunguska meteorite. Main objective of the field studies was identification of exotic rocks, furrows, and penetration funnels reported by the first eyewitnesses, residents of the area…
On January 19, 1993, a very bright bolide (peak magnitude -23) crossed the sky of Northern Italy, ending with an explosion approximately over the town of Lugo (Emilia Romagna, Italy). The explosion (14 kton of energy) generated shock waves…
We report a comprehensive analysis of the instrumentally observed meteorite fall \v{Z}\v{d}\'ar nad S\'azavou, which occurred in the Czech Republic on 9 December 2014 at 16:16:45-54 UT. The original meteoroid with an estimated initial mass…
Solar system small bodies come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, which are achieved following very individual evolutional paths through billions of years. This paper focuses on the reshaping process of rubble-pile asteroids driven by…
A mysterious increase of radiocarbon 14C ca. 775 AD in the Earth's atmosphere has been recently found by Miyake et al. (Nature, 486, 240, 2012). A possible source of this event has been discussed widely, the most likely being an extreme…
This paper presents the past evolution of the orbital elements of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, target of the Rosetta spacecraft. The gravitational orbit of the comet is affected by the sublimation of ice from the nucleus that triggers…
Ordinary chondrites (OCs) are by far the most abundant meteorites (80% of all falls). Their origin has long been the matter of a heated debate. About thirty years ago (e.g., Pellas 1988), it was proposed that OCs should originate from…
Impact basins identified by Mariner 10 and Messenger flyby images provide us a fossilized record of the impactor flux of asteroids on Mercury during the last stages of the early Solar System. The distribution of these basins is not uniform…
On 18 May 2024, a superbolide traversed the western part of the Iberian Peninsula, culminating its flight over the Atlantic Ocean and generating significant media attention. This event was caused by a weak carbonaceous meteoroid of 1 m,…
In this paper we apply different methods to examine the possibility that a small group of 24 asteroids dynamically linked to main-belt comet P/2006 VW139, recently discovered by the Pan-STARRS1 survey telescope, shares a common physical…
The first direct detection of the asteroidal YORP effect, a phenomenon that changes the spin states of small bodies due to thermal reemission of sunlight from their surfaces, was obtained for (54509) YORP 2000 PH5. Such an alteration can…
The final "giant-impact" phase of terrestrial planet formation is believed to begin with a large number of planetary "embryos" on nearly circular, coplanar orbits. Mutual gravitational interactions gradually excite their eccentricities…
Although petrologic, chemical and isotopic studies of ordinary chondrites and meteorites in general have largely helped establish a chronology of the earliest events of planetesimal formation and their evolution, there are several questions…