Related papers: Hubble Space Telescope Search for Activity in High…
We report the statistical detection (at the >99% confidence level) of a population of 28th magnitude objects exhibiting proper motions of ~1 arcsecond per hour at quadrature in deep HST/WFPC2 images. The drift directions imply a…
The population of the Kuiper Belt within 50 AU of the Sun has likely been severely depleted by gravitational perturbations from the giant planets, particularly Neptune. The density of Kuiper Belt objects is expected to be two orders of…
Solar system bodies with surface and sub-surface volatiles will show observational evidence of activity when they reach a temperature where those volatiles change from solid to gas and are released. This is most frequently seen in comets,…
We present Hubble Space Telescope observations of active asteroid P/2020 O1 taken to examine its development for a year after perihelion. We find that the mass loss peaks <~1 kg/s in 2020 August and then declines to nearly zero over four…
Centaurs are small bodies orbiting in the giant planet region which were scattered inwards from their source populations beyond Neptune. Some members of the population display comet-like activity during their transition through the solar…
We have been conducting a survey for distant solar system objects beyond the Kuiper Belt edge (~50 AU) with new wide-field cameras on the Subaru 8 meter and CTIO 4 meter telescopes. We are interested in the orbits of objects that are…
Activity of most comets near the Sun is dominated by sublimation of frozen water, the most abundant ice in comets. Some comets, however, are active well beyond the water-ice sublimation limit of ~3 AU. Three bodies dominate the…
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…
In 2010 Jewitt and Li published a paper examining the behavior of comet-asteroid transition object 3200 Phaethon, arguing it was asteroid-like in its behavior throughout most of its orbit, but that near its perihelion, at a distance of only…
We use an extensive suite of numerical simulations to constrain the mass and orbit of Planet Nine, the recently proposed perturber in a distant eccentric orbit in the outer solar system. We compare our simulations to the observed population…
The first interstellar object observed in our solar system, 1I/2017 U1 (`Oumuamua), exhibited a number of peculiar properties, including extreme elongation and acceleration excess. Recently, \cite{Seligman:2020vb} proposed that the object…
Because of relatively high surface temperatures and quick evolution of orbital parameters of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) of primitive types, the possibility of retention of icy materials (predominately H2O ice) remains in question. Yet,…
We present a new analysis of the currently available orbital elements for the known Kuiper belt objects. In the non-resonant, main Kuiper belt we find a statistically significant relationship between an object's absolute magnitude (H) and…
Water ice is abundant both astrophysically, for example in molecular clouds, and in planetary systems. The Kuiper belt objects, many satellites of the outer solar system, the nuclei of comets and some planetary rings are all known to be…
We present an analysis of comet activity based on the Spitzer Space Telescope component of the Survey of the Ensemble Physical Properties of Cometary Nuclei. We show that the survey is well suited to measuring the activity of Jupiter-family…
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…
Water is one of the central molecules for the formation and habitability of planets. In particular, the region where water freezes-out, the water snowline, could be a favorable location to form planets in protoplanetary disks. We use high…
Over the course of the past two decades, observational surveys have unveiled the intricate orbital structure of the Kuiper Belt, a field of icy bodies orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune. In addition to a host of readily-predictable orbital…
The hypothesis that a massive Planet Nine exists in the outer solar system on a distant eccentric orbit was inspired by observations showing that the objects with the most distant eccentric orbits in the Kuiper belt have orbits which are…
We examine a large collection of low resolution near-infrared spectra of Kuiper belt objects and centaurs in an attempt to understand the presence of water ice in the Kuiper belt. We find that water ice on the surface of these objects…