Related papers: (16) Psyche: A mesosiderite-like asteroid?
Asteroid modeling efforts in the last decade resulted in a comprehensive dataset of almost 400 convex shape models and their rotation states. This amount already provided a deep insight into physical properties of main-belt asteroids or…
The Solar Probe Plus (SPP) mission will explore the Sun's corona and innermost solar wind starting in 2018. The spacecraft will also come close to a number of Mercury-crossing asteroids with perihelia less than 0.3 AU. At small heliocentric…
(3200) Phaethon is a compelling object as it has an asteroidal appearance and spectrum, produces a weak dust tail during perihelion at just 0.14 AU, and is the parent body of the Geminid Meteor Shower. A better understanding of the physical…
We observed asteroid (596) Scheila and its ejecta cloud using the Swift UV-optical telescope. We obtained photometry of the nucleus and the ejecta, and for the first time measured the asteroid's reflection spectrum between 290 - 500 nm. Our…
We derive the geometric albedo of a near-Earth asteroid, (4179) Toutatis, to investigate its surface physical conditions. The asteroid has been studied rigorously not only via ground-based photometric, spectrometric, polarimetric, and radar…
Thermal infrared emission and thermophysical modeling techniques are powerful tools in deciphering the surface properties of asteroids. The near-Earth asteroid (3200) Phaethon is an active asteroid with a very small perihelion distance and…
We determine the average metallicities of the elements of cold halo substructure (ECHOS) that we previously identified in the inner halo of the Milky Way within 17.5 kpc of the Sun. As a population, we find that stars kinematically…
The identification of basaltic asteroids in the asteroid Main Belt and the description of their surface mineralogy is necessary to understand the diversity in the collection of basaltic meteorites. Basaltic asteroids can be identified from…
In this work, we investigate the surface thermophysical properties (thermal emissivity, thermal inertia, roughness fraction and geometric albedo) of asteroid (99942) Apophis, using the currently available thermal infrared observations of…
Due to the high-precision nature of the ASTROD (Astrodynamical Space Test of Relativity using Optical Devices) mission concept, the asteroid perturbations on the ASTROD spacecraft is crucial. These perturbations need to be modelled and…
Physical studies of asteroids depend on an availability of lightcurve data. Targets that are easy to observe and analyse naturally have more data available, so their synodic periods are confirmed from multiple sources. Also, thanks to…
Enstatite chondrites and aubrites are meteorites that show the closest similarities to the Earth in many isotope systems that undergo mass-independent and mass-dependent isotope fractionations. Due to the analytical challenges to obtain…
Six asteroids including two NEAs, one of which is PHA, accessible for observation in September 2012 were investigated using a low-resolution spectrophotometry in the range 0.35-0.90 um with the aim to study features of their reflectance…
The observed near-Earth asteroid population contains very few objects with small perihelion distances, say, q<=0.2 au. NEAs that currently have orbits with larger q might be hiding a past evolution during which they have approached closer…
The projected shell model is used to study the multi-quasiparticle and collective excitations of 178Hf. With an axially symmetric basis, the spin-16 isomer at 2.4 MeV appears to be well separated in energy/spin space from other…
We conducted a polarimetric observation of the fast-rotating near-Earth asteroid (1566) Icarus at large phase (Sun-asteroid-observer's) angles $\alpha$= 57 deg--141deg around the 2015 summer solstice. We found that the maximum values of the…
Thanks to the Gaia mission, it will be possible to determine the masses of approximately hundreds of large main belt asteroids with very good precision. We currently have diameter estimates for all of them that can be used to compute their…
We have determined possible cluster members of the nearby open cluster Praesepe (M44) based on J and K photometry and proper motions from the PPMXL catalogue and z photometry from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). In total we identified…
Analysis of laboratory experiments simulating space weathering optical effects on atmosphereless planetary bodies reveals that the time needed to alter the spectrum of an ordinary chondrite meteorite to resemble the overall spectral shape…
Many theories predict the existence of very heavy compact objects, that in terms of sizes would belong to the realms of nuclear or atomic physics, but in terms of masses could extend to the macroscopic world, reaching kilograms, tonnes or…