Related papers: Short-term variability on the surface of (1) Ceres…
Context: Despite the observed signs of large impacts on the surface of Ceres, there is no confirmed collisional family associated with this dwarf planet. After a dynamical and photometric study, a sample of 156 asteroids was proposed as…
The NASA/Dawn mission has acquired an unprecedented amount of data from the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres, providing a thorough characterization of its surface composition. The current favorite compositional model includes a mixture of…
Recently published space-based observations of main-belt asteroids with the AKARI telescope provide a full description of the 3 {\mu}m band, related to the presence of OH bearing minerals. Here, we use laboratory spectra of carbonaceous…
Context. Sunlight scattered from the surface of an airless body is generally partially polarized, and the corresponding polarization state includes information about the scattering surface, such as albedo, surface grain sizes, composition,…
The goal of Project GAUSS is to return samples from the dwarf planet Ceres. Ceres is the most accessible ocean world candidate and the largest reservoir of water in the inner solar system. It shows active cryovolcanism and hydrothermal…
Variations and spatial distributions of bright and dark material on dwarf planet Ceres play a key role in understanding the processes that have led to its present surface composition. We define limits for bright and dark material in order…
This work focuses on the study of the aqueous alteration process which acted in the main belt and produced hydrated minerals on the altered asteroids. The aqueous alteration is particularly important for unraveling the processes occurring…
We present photometric light curves for a sample of 21 ultra cool M and L dwarfs in the field and in the young open clusters sigma Orionis and the Pleiades. Evidence for variability with RMS amplitudes (in the I band) of 0.01 to 0.055…
We observed Ceres at three epochs in 2015 November and 2017 September and October with ALMA 12-meter array and in 2017 October with the ALMA Compact Array (ACA), all at ~265 GHz continuum (wavelengths of ~1.1 mm) to map the temperatures of…
A diurnal varying haze layer at the bright spots of Occator on dwarf planet Ceres has been reported from images of the Dawn Framing Camera. This finding is supported by ground-based observations revealing diurnal albedo changes at Occator's…
We present a global spectrophotometric characterization of the Ceres surface using Dawn Framing Camera (FC) images. We identify the photometric model that yields the best results for photometrically correcting images. Corrected FC images…
The surface reflectance of planetary regoliths may increase dramatically towards zero phase angle, a phenomenon known as the opposition effect (OE). Two physical processes that are thought to be the dominant contributors to the brightness…
With an estimated diameter in the 320 to 350 km range, (704) Interamnia is the fifth largest main belt asteroid and one of the few bodies that fills the gap in size between the four largest bodies with $D$ > 400 km (Ceres, Vesta, Pallas and…
Ice sintering is a form of metamorphism that drives the microstructural evolution of an aggregate of grains through surface and volume diffusion. This leads to an increase in the grain-to-grain contact area ("neck") and density of the…
Context. The dwarf planet Ceres and the asteroid Vesta have been studied by the Dawn space mission. They are the two heaviest bodies of the main asteroid belt and have different characteristics. Notably, Vesta appears to be dry and inactive…
Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are excellent laboratories for testing processes that affect airless bodies, as well as informing us about Solar System history. Though most NEOs are nominally anhydrous because they formed inside the Solar System…
Large main-belt asteroids (diameter $D \gtrsim 120\ \mathrm{km}$) exhibit a surface composition gradient as a function of heliocentric distance, ranging from anhydrous bodies to those rich in hydrated and, possibly, ammoniated materials.…
Low-albedo asteroids preserve a record of the primordial solar system planetesimals and the conditions in which the solar nebula was active. However, the origin and evolution of these asteroids are not well-constrained. Here we measured…
Context. Icy dwarf planets are key for studying the chemical and physical states of ices in the outer solar system. The study of secular and rotational variations gives us hints of the processes that contribute to the evolution of their…
Recent observations have suggested that there is water ice present on the surfaces of 24 Themis and 1 Ceres. We present upper limits on the H$_2$O production rate on these bodies derived using a search for [OI]6300 Angstrom emission. For…