Related papers: Active Asteroids: Main-Belt Comets and Disrupted A…
Previously unknown asteroid P/2010 A2 rose to prominence in 2010 by forming a transient, comet-like tail consisting of ejected dust. The observed dust production was interpreted as either the result of a hypervelocity impact with a smaller…
The asteroid belt is the leftover of the original planetesimal population in the inner solar system. However, currently the asteroids have orbits with all possible values of eccentricities and inclinations compatible with long-term…
The peculiar object P/2010 A2 was discovered by the LINEAR near-Earth asteroid survey in January 2010 and given a cometary designation due to the presence of a trail of material, although there was no central condensation or coma. The…
While of order a million asteroids have been discovered, the number in rigorously controlled samples that have precise orbits and rotation periods, as well as well-measured colors, is relatively small. In particular, less than a dozen…
Splitting of the nuclei of comets into multiple components has been frequently observed but, to date, no main-belt asteroid has been observed to break-up. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, we find that main-belt asteroid P/2013 R3 consists…
The seven known main belt comets (MBCs) have orbital characteristics of main belt asteroids yet exhibit dust ejection like comets. In order to constrain their physical and orbital properties we searched the Thousand Asteroid Light Curve…
We present archival observations demonstrating that main belt asteroid (6478) Gault has an extensive history of comet-like activity. Outbursts have taken place during multiple epochs since 2013 and at distances extending as far as 2.68 au,…
Asteroids and comets dissipate energy when they rotate about the axis different from the axis of the maximal moment of inertia. We show that the most efficient internal relaxation happens at the double frequency of body's tumbling.…
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…
Some principles in the distribution of Centaurs and the "Scattered Disk" objects, as well as the Kuiper belt objects for its semi-major axes, eccentricities and inclinations of the orbits have been investigated. It has been established,…
The problem of origin and age of asteroid families is studied very intensively. First of all youngest families are interesting due to possibility of the reconstruction their collisional history. But in oldest families present objects with…
Asteroid collisions are one of the main processes responsible for the evolution of bodies in the main belt. Using observations of the Dimorphos impact by the DART spacecraft, we estimate how asteroid collisions in the main belt may look in…
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…
Asteroids and comets are remnants from the era of Solar System formation over 4.5 billion years ago, and therefore allow us to address two fundamental questions in astronomy: what was the nature of our protoplanetary disk, and how did the…
For the first time, spectral signs of subtle coma activity were observed simultaneously on four main-belt primitive asteroids (145) Adeona, (704) Interamnia, (779) Nina, and (1474) Beira around their perihelion distances in September 2012,…
We present observations using the Baade Magellan and Canada-France-Hawaii telescopes showing that main-belt comet 324P/La Sagra, formerly known as P/2010 R2, has become active again for the first time since originally observed to be active…
So-called 'dark comets' are small, morphologically inactive near-Earth objects (NEOs) that exhibit nongravitational accelerations inconsistent with radiative effects. These objects exhibit short rotational periods (minutes to hours), where…
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…
Using a fully autonomous spacecraft - Bering - we propose to detect and study sub-km asteroids from an orbit within the asteroid Main Belt. The main purpose of the proposed Bering mission is to detect a statistically significant sample of…
Main-belt asteroid 2010 LH$_{15}$ has been classified as an active asteroid, based on the recent discovery of dust activity from the archival images observed in 2010 and 2019. In this study, we perform measurements and dynamical modeling of…