Related papers: Using Dust Shed from Asteroids as Microsamples to …
Tiny meteoroids entering the Earth's atmosphere and inducing meteor showers have long been thought to originate partly from cometary dust. Together with other dust particles, they form a huge cloud around the Sun, the zodiacal cloud. From…
We consider the ability of three models - impacts, captures, and collisional cascades - to account for a bright cloud of dust in Fomalhaut b. Our analysis is based on a novel approach to the power-law size distribution of solid particles…
Fragments of small solar system bodies entering Earth's atmosphere have possibly been important contributors of organic compounds to the early Earth. The cyano radical (CN) emission from meteors is considered as potentially one of the most…
We report a detection of statistically significant color variations for a sample of 7,531 multiply observed asteroids that are listed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Moving Object Catalog. Using 5-band photometric observations accurate to…
The number of asteroids with accurately determined orbits increases fast. The catalogs of asteroid physical observations have also increased, although the number of objects is still smaller than in the orbital catalogs. We developed a new…
We propose that extrasolar asteroid belts can be detected through their gravitational microlensing signatures. Asteroid belt + star lens systems create so-called "pseudo-caustics", regions in the source plane where the magnification…
It is known, from observational data recorded from airbursts, that small asteroids breakup at dynamical pressures lower than their mechanical strength. This means that actual theoretical models are inconsistent with observations. In this…
Cometary meteoroid trails exist in the vicinity of comets, forming fine structure of the interplanetary dust cloud. The trails consist predominantly of cometary particles with sizes of approximately 0.1 mm to 1 cm which are ejected at low…
Planetesimal belts are ubiquitous around nearby stars, and their spatial properties hold crucial information for planetesimal and planet formation models. We present resolved dust observations of 74 planetary systems as part of the REsolved…
Meteorites, and in particular primitive meteorites (chondrites), are irreplaceable probes of the solar protoplanetary disk. We review their essential properties and endeavour to place them in astrophysical context. The earliest solar system…
Radar and spacecraft observations show the permanently shadowed regions around Mercury's North Pole to contain water ice and complex organic material. One possible source of this material are impacts by interplanetary dust particles (IDPs),…
M-type asteroids, as defined in the Tholen taxonomy (Tholen, 1984), are medium albedo bodies supposed to have a metallic composition and to be the progenitors both of differentiated iron-nickel meteorites and enstatite chondrites. We…
The population of Earth-impacting meteoroids and its size-dependent orbital elements are key to understanding the origin of meteorites and informing on planetary defence efforts. Outstanding questions include the role of collisions in…
Understanding the origin of comets requires knowledge of how the Solar System formed from a cloud of dust and gas 4.567 Gyr ago. Here, a review is presented of how the remnants of this formation process, meteorites and to a lesser extent…
Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites are known for having high water and organic material contents, including amino acids. Here we address the origin of amino acids in the warm interiors of their parent bodies (planetesimals) within a few…
Meteor physics can provide new clues about the size, structure, and density of cometary disintegration products, establishing a bridge between different research fields. From meteor magnitude data we have estimated the mass distribution of…
The collisional and sticking properties of sub-mm-sized aggregates composed of protoplanetary dust analogue material are measured, including the statistical threshold velocity between sticking and bouncing, their surface energy and tensile…
A dust cloud of Ganymede has been detected by in-situ measurements with the dust detector onboard the Galileo spacecraft. The dust grains have been sensed at altitudes below five Ganymede radii (Ganymede radius = $\rm 2,635 km$). Our…
The study of the last stages of planet formation, also known as debris disks, is fundamental to place constrains on the formation of planetary sized bodies. Debris disks are composed of dust and occasionally small amounts of gas, both…
The experiments presented aim to measure the outcome of collisions between sub-mm sized protoplanetary dust aggregate analogues. We also observed the clusters formed from these aggregates and their collision behaviour. The experiments were…