Related papers: The Brazil-nut effect and its application to aster…
The Yarkovsky effect is a thermal process acting upon the orbits of small celestial bodies, which can cause these orbits to slowly expand or contract with time. The effect is subtle (da/dt ~ 10^-4 au/My for a 1 km diameter object) and is…
We present the results of a project to detect small (~1 km) main-belt asteroids with the 3.6 meter Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). We observed in 2 filters (MegaPrime g' and r') in order to compare the results in each band. Owing to…
Young asteroid families are unique sources of information about fragmentation physics and the structure of their parent bodies, since their physical properties have not changed much since their birth. Families have different properties such…
Surface shedding of an asteroid is a failure mode where surface materials fly off due to strong centrifugal forces beyond the critical spin period, while the internal structure does not deform significantly. This paper proposes a possible…
The observationally complete sample of the main belt asteroids now spans more than two orders of magnitude in size and numbers more than 64,000 (excluding collisional family members). We undertook an analysis of asteroids' eccentricities…
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…
Exploration of asteroid (101955) Bennu by the OSIRIS-REx mission has provided an in-depth look at this rubble-pile near-Earth asteroid. In particular, the measured gravity field and the detailed shape model of Bennu indicate significant…
Reliably predicting the geomorphology and climate of planetary bodies requires knowledge of the dynamic threshold wind shear velocity below which saltation transport ceases. Here we measure this threshold in a wind tunnel for four…
Asteroid surfaces are subjected to mechanical weathering processes that result in the development and evolution of regolith. Two proposed mechanisms--impact bombardment and thermal fatigue--have been proposed as viable and dominant…
This is a study of the history of the asteroids in the main asteroid belt. Collisions have been the dominant process. Every asteroid has been impacted by others a multitude of times, with consequences of cratering, erosion, spin increments,…
Context: Bouncing collisions of dust aggregates within the protoplanetary may have a significant impact on the growth process of planetesimals. Yet, the conditions that result in bouncing are not very well understood. Existing simulations…
The majority of basaltic objects in the main belt are dynamically connected to Vesta, the largest differentiated asteroid known. Others, due to their current orbital parameters, cannot be easily dynamically linked to Vesta. This is…
Determining the size and orbital distribution of the population of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) is the focus of intense research, with the most recent models converging to a population of approximately $1000$ NEAs larger than 1 km and up to…
Asteroid discoveries are essential for planetary-defense efforts aiming to prevent impacts with Earth, including the more frequent megaton explosions from decameter impactors. While large asteroids ($\geq$100 km) have remained in the main…
Given the compositional diversity of asteroids, and their distribution in space, it is impossible to consider returning samples from each one to establish their origin. However, the velocity and molecular composition of primary minerals,…
We have evaluated the rate at which the asteroid belt is losing material, and how it splits between macroscopic bodies and meteoritic dust. The mass loss process is due to the injection of asteroid fragments into unstable dynamical regions,…
Spin off events and impacts can eject boulders from an asteroid surface and rubble pile asteroids can accumulate from debris following a collision between large asteroids. These processes produce a population of gravitational bound objects…
Small asteroids and large meteoroids frequently impact the Earth, though their physical and material properties remain poorly understood. When observed as fireballs in Earth's atmosphere, these properties can be inferred from their ablation…
The implication of small amounts of cohesion within relatively small rubble pile asteroids is investigated with regard to their evolution under the persistent presence of the YORP effect. We find that below a characteristic size, which is a…
Photometry results of 32 asteroids are reported from only seven observing nights on only seven fields, consisting of 34.11 cumulative hours of observations. The data were obtained with a wide-field CCD (40.5'x27.3') mounted on a small,…