Related papers: Active Asteroids: Main-Belt Comets and Disrupted A…
We present archival observations of Main-belt asteroid (248370) 2005 QN173 (also designated 433P) that demonstrate this recently discovered active asteroid (a body with a dynamically asteroidal orbit displaying a tail or coma) has had at…
Asteroids formed in a dynamically quiescent disk but their orbits became gravitationally stirred enough by Jupiter to lead to high-speed collisions. As a result, many dozen large asteroids have been disrupted by impacts over the age of the…
The main-belt comets occupy dynamically asteroidal orbits in the main asteroid belt. Here we present physical observations of the second-known member of this population, P/2005 U1 (Read), which showed vigorous cometary activity from 2005…
Active asteroids behave dynamically like asteroids but display comet-like comae. These objects are poorly understood, with only about 30 identified to date. We have conducted one of the deepest systematic searches for asteroid activity by…
There is a group of newly recognized asteroids in the main belt that are exhibiting cometary characteristics. We will call them Asteroidal Belt Comets or ABCs. An analysis of their orbital and physical properties has resulted in the…
From 1996 to 2015 sixteen main belt asteroids were discovered exhibiting cometary activity (less than one per year), all of them during searches at the telescope. In this work we will explore another way to discover them. We reduced 192016…
We announce the discovery of activity, in the form of a distinct cometary tail, emerging from main-belt asteroid 2015 VA108. Activity was first identified by volunteers of the Citizen Science project Active Asteroids (a NASA Partner). We…
Cometary activity in main-belt asteroids probes the ice content of these objects and provides clues to the history of volatiles in the inner solar system. We search the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) survey to derive upper limits on the…
The mysterious solar system object 133P/(7968) Elst-Pizarro is dynamically asteroidal, yet displays recurrent comet-like dust emission. Two scenarios were hypothesized to explain this unusual behavior: (1) 133P is a classical comet from the…
The practical distinctions between asteroids and comets, viewed as products of accretion on either side of the snow line, are less clear-cut than previously understood. In this chapter, we discuss the numerous solar system populations which…
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…
While having a comet-like appearance, P/2012 F5 (Gibbs) has an orbit native to the Main Asteroid Belt, and physically is a km-sized asteroid which recently (mid 2011) experienced an impulsive mass ejection event. Here we report new…
Collisions are one of the key processes shaping planetary systems. Asteroid families are outcomes of such collisions still identifiable across our solar system. The families provide a unique view of catastrophic disruption phenomena and…
We review the evidence for buried ice in the asteroid belt; specifically the questions around the so-called Main Belt Comets (MBCs). We summarise the evidence for water throughout the Solar System, and describe the various methods for…
We report on the results of a systematic search for associated asteroid families for all active asteroids known to date. We find that 10 out of 12 main-belt comets (MBCs) and 5 out of 7 disrupted asteroids are linked with known or candidate…
Active asteroids show (typically transient) cometary activity, driven by a range of processes. A sub-set, sometimes called main-belt comets, may be driven by sublimation and so could be useful for tracing the present-day distribution of…
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,…
A body dissipates energy when it freely rotates about any axis different from principal. This entails relaxation, i.e., decrease of the rotational energy, with the angular momentum preserved. The spin about the major-inertia axis…
The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey, specifically the Very Wide segment of data, is used to search for possible main-belt comets. In the first data set, 952 separate objects with asteroidal orbits within the main-belt are…
In this review presented at the Royal Society meeting, "Cometary Science After Rosetta", I present an overview of studies of small solar system objects that exhibit properties of both asteroids and comets (with a focus on so-called active…