Related papers: Asteroid Evolution: Role of Geotechnical Propertie…
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…
Molecular clouds are the principle stellar nurseries of our universe, keeping them in the focus of both observational and theoretical studies. From observations, some of the key properties of molecular clouds are well known but many…
After 25 years of laboratory research on protoplanetary dust agglomeration, a consistent picture of the various processes that involve colliding dust aggregates has emerged. Besides sticking, bouncing and fragmentation, other effects, like,…
Mean motion resonances play a fundamental role in the dynamics of the small bodies of the Solar System. The last decades of the 20th century gave us a detailed description of the dynamics as well as the process of capture of small bodies in…
In this contribution I summarize some recent successes, and focus on remaining challenges, in understanding the formation and evolution of planetary systems in the context of the Blue Dots initiative. Because our understanding is…
Rubble-pile asteroids can form through the self-gravitational reaccumulation of fragments produced during large-scale collisions. To investigate how differentiated bodies are disrupted and how iron-rich rubble piles may form, we performed…
The orbital dynamics of a spacecraft orbiting around irregular small celestial bodies is a challenging problem. Difficulties to model the gravity field of these bodies arise from the poor knowledge of the exact shape as observed from the…
The size distribution of small asteroids in the Main Belt is assumed to be determined by an equilibrium between the creation of new bodies out of the impact debris of larger asteroids and the destruction of small asteroids by collisions…
Binary stars are pairs of stars that are gravitationally bound, providing in some cases accurate measurements of their masses and radii. As such, they serve as excellent testbeds for the theory of stellar structure and evolution. Moreover,…
Stellar evolution models are a cornerstone of young star astrophysics, which necessitates that they yield accurate and reliable predictions of stellar properties. Here, I review the current performance of stellar evolution models against…
I present a review of astrometric techniques and instrumentation utilized to search for, detect, and characterize extra-solar planets. First, I briefly summarize the properties of the present-day sample of extrasolar planets, in connection…
Exoplanet properties depend on how well the host star is characterized. For instance, the stellar atmospheric parameters (i.e., effective temperature, surface gravity and overall metallicity) are needed to derive the stellar mass and radius…
When a granular material is impacted by a sphere, its surface deforms like a liquid yet it preserves a circular crater like a solid. Although the mechanism of granular impact cratering by solid spheres is well explored, our knowledge on…
The evolution of a star is driven by the physical processes in its interior making the theory of stellar structure and evolution the most crucial ingredient for not only stellar evolution studies, but any field of astronomy which relies on…
We model the evolution of the galactic bulge and of the bulges of a selected sample of external spiral galaxies, via the multiphase multizone evolution model. We address a few questions concerning the role of the bulges within galactic…
The study of stellar oscillations - asteroseismology - has revolutionized our understanding of the physical properties of the Sun, and similar potential for other stars has been demonstrated in recent years. In particular, asteroseismic…
Recent observations have revealed the presence of a variety of small-scale ``micro-structures'' in Planetary Nebulae images. I discuss numerical hydrodynamics models of planetaries and outline the formation and growth of instabilities that…
Planetary nebulae (PN) represent the evolutionary fate of the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stellar envelopes, thus are ideally suited to study the chemical impact of AGB stars. Stellar evolution predict elemental enrichment through the AGB…
The majority of star formation results in binaries or higher multiple systems, and planets in such systems are constrained to a limited range of orbital parameters in order to remain stable against perturbations from stellar companions.…
The planets with a radius $<$ 4 $R$$_\oplus$ observed by the Kepler mission exhibit a unique feature, and propose a challenge for current planetary formation models. The tidal effect between a planet and its host star plays an essential…