Related papers: Asteroid Family Physical Properties
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…
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…
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.…
The past decade has brought major improvements in large-scale asteroid discovery and characterization with over half a million known asteroids and over 100,000 with some measurement of physical characterization. This explosion of data has…
A new family classification, based on a catalog of proper elements with $\sim 384,000$ numbered asteroids and on new methods is available. For the $45$ dynamical families with $>250$ members identified in this classification, we present an…
An asteroid pair can be described as two asteroids with highly similar heliocentric orbits that are genetically related but not gravitationally bound. They can be produced by asteroid collisions or rotational fission. Although over 200…
Despite the large amount of high quality data generated in recent space encounters with asteroids, the majority of our knowledge about these objects comes from ground based observations. Asteroids travelling in orbits that are potentially…
Rotationally fissioned asteroids produce unbound daughter asteroids that have very similar heliocentric orbits. Backward integration of their current heliocentric orbits provides an age of closest proximity that can be used to date the…
Asteroid families are groups of minor planets that have a common origin in breakup events. The very young compact asteroid clusters are the natural laboratory to study resonance related chaotic and nonlinear dynamics. The present dynamical…
Some asteroids eject dust, producing transient, comet-like comae and tails; these are the active asteroids. The causes of activity in this newly-identified population are many and varied. They include impact ejection and disruption,…
In order to fully understand the shapes of asteroids families in the 3-dimensional space of the proper elements $(a_{\rm p}, e_{\rm p}, \sin I_{\rm p})$ it is necessary to compare observed asteroids with N-body simulations. To this point,…
It is known, from observational data recorded from airbursts, that small asteroids breakup at dynamical pressures lower than their mechanical strength. This means that actual theoretical models are inconsistent with observations. In this…
Satellites of asteroids have been discovered in nearly every known small body population, and a remarkable aspect of the known satellites is the diversity of their properties. They tell a story of vast differences in formation and evolution…
Asteroid families form as a result of large-scale collisions among main belt asteroids. The orbital distribution of fragments after a family-forming impact could inform us about their ejection velocities. Unfortunately, however, orbits…
The physical composition and structure of meteoroids gives us insight into the formation processes of their parent asteroids and comets. The strength of and fundamental grain sizes in meteoroids tell us about the environment in which small…
Here we show an example of a young asteroid cluster located in a dynamically stable region, which was produced by partial disruption of a primitive body about 30 km in size. We estimate its age to be only 1.9 +/- 0.3 Myr, thus its…
Satellites around large asteroids are preferentially found among those with the most rapid rotation and elongated shape. The taxonomic statistics are similarly skewed; in total, 13 asteroids larger than 100 km are known to have satellites,…
The regolith-covered surfaces of asteroids preserve records of geophysical processes that have occurred both at their surfaces and sometimes also in their interiors. As a result of the unique micro-gravity environment that these bodies…
Observations with radar, photometric and direct imaging techniques have discovered that multiple asteroid systems can be divided clearly into a handful of different morphologies, and recently, the discovery of small unbound asteroid systems…
In this work, we study the continuation of a periodic orbit on a relatively large scale and discover the existence of convergence under certain conditions, which has profound significance in research on asteroids and can provide a total…