Related papers: Asteroid-Comet Continuum Objects in the Solar Syst…
We present a short review of the impact regime experienced by the terrestrial planets within our own Solar system, describing the three populations of potentially hazardous objects which move on orbits that take them through the inner Solar…
Asteroids and comets are of strategic importance for science in an effort to understand the formation, evolution and composition of the Solar System. Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are of particular interest because of their accessibility from…
The Centaurs are a transient population of small bodies in the outer solar system whose orbits are strongly chaotic. These objects typically suffer significant changes of orbital parameters on timescales of a few thousand years, and their…
Context: Observation of star occultations is a powerful tool to determine shapes and sizes of asteroids. This is key information necessary for studying the evolution of the asteroid belt and to calibrate indirect methods of size…
With recent observational advancements, exocomet studies have entered a new era: we have moved from an epoch where exocomets' signatures were analysed to identify their true nature to a new epoch where individual exocomets' detections are…
Comets are icy objects that orbitally evolve from the trans-Neptunian region (the Kuiper belt and beyond) into the inner Solar System, where they are heated by solar radiation and become active due to sublimation of water ice. Here we…
We have studied the conditions of through passage of asteroids with diameters 200, 100 and 50 m, consisting of three types of materials -- iron, stone and water ice across the Earth's atmosphere with the minimum trajectory altitude 10--15…
A considerable amount of information regarding the processes that occurred during the accretion of the early planetesimals is still present among the small bodies of our solar system. A review of our current knowledge of the density of…
The objectives of this project are to predict new meteor showers associated with as many as possible known periodic comets and to find a generic relationship of some already known showers with these comets. For a potential parent comet, we…
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…
Observational surveys for extrasolar planets probe the diverse outcomes of planet formation and evolution. These surveys measure the frequency of planets with different masses, sizes, orbital characteristics, and host star properties. Small…
Small Solar system bodies serve as pristine records that have been minimally altered since their formation. Their observations provide valuable information regarding the formation and evolution of our Solar system. Interstellar objects…
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…
Main Belt comets represent a recently discovered class of objects. They are quite intriguing because, while having a Tisserand invariant value higher than 3, are showing cometary activity. We study the activity of the Main Belt comets…
Transiting extrasolar planets are extraordinarily valuable for understanding the characteristics and formation of planets, because they are the only exoplanets whose physical and orbital properties can be measured to high precision.…
In the search for life beyond our Solar system, attention should be focused on those planets that have the potential to maintain habitable conditions over the prolonged periods of time needed for the emergence and expansion of life as we…
When extrasolar planets are observed to transit their parent stars, we are granted unprecedented access to their physical properties. It is only for transiting planets that we are permitted direct estimates of the planetary masses and…
The late stages of stellar evolution from asymptotic giant branch stars to planetary nebulae are now known to be an active phase of molecular synthesis. Over 80 gas-phase molecules have been detected through rotational transitions in the…
Comets are classified from their orbital characteristics into two separate classes: nearly-isotropic, mainly long-period comets and ecliptic, short-period comets. Members from the former class are coming from the Oort cloud. Those of the…
Evidence for exocomets, icy bodies in extrasolar planetary systems, has rapidly increased over the past decade. Volatiles are detected through the gas that exocomets release as they collide and grind down within their natal belts, or as…