Related papers: From Centaurs to comets - 40 years
Quaoar is a classical Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) with an area equivalent diameter of 1,100 km and an orbital semi-major axis of 43.3 astronomical units. Based on stellar occultations observed between 2018 and 2021, an inhomogeneous ring…
Images of the trans-Neptunian objects 1997 CQ29 and 2000 CF105 obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope's WFPC2 camera show them to be binary. The two components of 1997 CQ29 were separated in our images by 0.20 arcsec in November 2001 and…
The paper analyses possible transfers of bodies from the main asteroid belt (MBA) to the Centaur region. The orbits of asteroids in the 2:1 mean motion resonance (MMR) with Jupiter are analysed. We selected the asteroids that are in…
A modified Baker-Nunn camera was used to conduct a wide-field survey of 1428 square degrees of sky near the ecliptic in search of bright Kuiper Belt objects and Centaurs. This area is an order of magnitude larger than any previously…
Almost all of the $>600$ known Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) have been discovered within 50 AU of the Sun. One possible explanation for the observed lack of KBOs beyond 50 AU is that the distant Kuiper belt is dynamically very cold, and thus…
The Edgeworth-Kuiper belt encodes the dynamical history of the outer solar system. Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) bear witness to coagulation physics, the evolution of planetary orbits, and external perturbations from the solar neighborhood. We…
This text was originally written to accompany a series of lectures that I gave at the `35th Saas-Fee advanced course' in Switzerland and at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaii. It reviews my current understanding of the…
We identified known Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) and Centaurs in the complete Dark Energy Survey (DES) year six catalog (DES Y6) through the Sky Body Tracker (SkyBoT) tool. We classified our dataset of 144 objects into a widely used…
Explaining the origin of the orbit of 2000 CR105 (a ~ 230AU, q ~ 45AU) is a major test for our understanding of the primordial evolution of the outer Solar System. Gladman et al. (2001) showed that this objects could not have been a normal…
The Solar system beyond Neptune is believed to house a population of small primordial bodies left over from the planet formation process. The region up to heliocentric distance $\sim 50 AU$ (a.k.a. the Kuiper Belt) may be the source of the…
The small bodies in the Kuiper Belt region of the distant Solar System are leftovers from planet formation. Their orbital distribution today tells us about how giant planets migrated, while their surface properties, shapes, and sizes tell…
Context: Distant trans-Neptunian objects are subject to planetary perturbations and galactic tides. The former decrease with the distance, while the latter increase. In the intermediate regime where they have the same order of magnitude…
The recently discovered object P/2019 LD2 (ATLAS) was initially thought to be a Jupiter Trojan asteroid, until dynamical studies and the appearance of persistent cometary activity revealed that this object is actually an active Centaur.…
Recent observations indicate that >99% of the small bodies in the Solar System reside in its outer reaches --- in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. Kuiper Belt bodies are probably the best preserved representatives of the icy planetesimals…
The Oort cloud, a collection of icy bodies orbiting the sun at roughly $10^{3}$ AU to $10^{5}$ AU, is believed to be the source of the long-period comets observed in the inner solar system. Although its existence was predicted nearly 70…
Among all the asteroid dynamical groups, Centaurs have the highest fraction of objects moving in retrograde orbits. The distribution in absolute magnitude, H, of known retrograde Centaurs with semi-major axes in the range 6-34 AU exhibits a…
This paper reports the discovery and orbital characterization of two extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs), 2016 QV$_{89}$ and 2016 QU$_{89}$, which have orbits that appear similar to that of a previously known object, 2013 UH$_{15}$. All…
We review the current state of knowledge of the long-term evolution of the small bodies that give rise to comets and exocomets, as well as their reservoirs. The active cometary phase is only transitory, and bodies that become comets pass…
The first interstellar object, `Oumuamua, was discovered in the Solar System by Pan-STARRS in 2017, allowing for a calibration of the abundance of interstellar objects of its size and an estimation of the subset of objects trapped by the…
The New Horizons spacecraft's flyby of Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) (486958) Arrokoth revealed a bilobed shape with highly flattened lobes both aligned to its equatorial plane, and a rotational axis almost aligned to the orbital plane…