Related papers: Hubble Space Telescope Search for Activity in High…
A set of six debris disk candidates identified with IRAS or WISE excesses were observed at either 350 um or 450 um with the CSO. Five of the targets - HIP 51658, HIP 68160, HIP 73512, HIP 76375, and HIP 112460 - have among the largest…
The D/H ratio in cometary water has been shown to vary between 1 and 3 times the Earth's oceans value, in both Oort cloud comets and Jupiter-family comets originating from the Kuiper belt. We present new sensitive spectroscopic observations…
The densities of mid-sized Kuiper belt objects are a key constraint into understanding the assembly of objects in the outer solar system. These objects are critical for understanding the currently unexplained transition from the smallest…
Universal small-scale solar activity in quiet region are suggested to be a potential source of solar wind and the upper solar atmosphere. Here, with the high-resoltion 174 \AA~imaging observations from the Solar Orbiter/Extreme Ultraviolet…
The most distant Kuiper belt objects appear to be clustered in longitude of perihelion and in orbital pole position. To date, the only two suggestions for the cause of these apparent clusterings have been either the effects of observational…
Comets and small Kuiper belt objects are considered to be among the most primitive objects in the solar system as comets like C/1995 O1 Hale-Bopp are rich in highly volatile ices like CO. It has been suggested that early in the solar system…
Gravitational waves (GWs) accompanied by electromagnetic (EM) counterparts provide a novel methodology to measure the Hubble constant ($H_0$), known as bright sirens. However, the rarity of such multi-messenger events limits the precision…
We have analyzed Kepler light curves for 849 stars with T_eff < 5200 K from our Cycle 1 Guest Observer program. We identify six new eclipsing binaries, one of which has an orbital period of 29.91 d, and two of which are probably W UMa…
Context: Molecular hydrogen (H2) is the most abundant molecule in the circumstellar (CS) environments of young stars, and is a key element in giant planet formation. The measurement of the H2 content provides the most direct probe of the…
The disk atmosphere is one of the fundamental elements of theoretical models of a protoplanetary disk. However, the direct observation of the warm gas (>> 100 K) at large radius of a disk (>> 10 AU) is challenging, because the line emission…
We report the results of a search for pure rotational molecular hydrogen emission from the circumstellar environments of young stellar objects with disks using the Texas Echelon Cross Echelle Spectrograph (TEXES) on the NASA Infrared…
We present Hubble Space Telescope observations of the active asteroid (and Geminid stream parent) 3200 Phaethon when at its closest approach to Earth (separation 0.07 AU) in 2017 December. Images were recorded within $\sim$1\degr~of the…
Optical secondary eclipse measurements made by \emph{Kepler} reveal a diverse set of geometric albedos for hot Jupiters with equilibrium temperatures between $1550-1700$ K. The presence or absence of high altitude condensates, such as…
Ejection of large boulder-like debris is a vigorous form of cometary activity that is unlikely induced by water ice out-gassing alone but rather associated with the sublimation of super-volatile ices. Though perceived on several comets,…
Spectral analysis needs the observation of lines of successive ionization stages in order to evaluate the ionization equilibrium (of a particular species) which is a sensitive indicator for the effective temperature. Since stars with…
Context. More than ten Centaurs are now known to have cometary activity at large heliocentric distance (i.e. $\simeq$ 5-13 AU). Among these objects, 174P/Echeclus which showed cometary activity at 13 AU from the Sun, is a unique case,…
We have obtained a high-resolution, JWST NIRSpec $2.87$ -- $5.14$ $\mu$m spectrum of the debris disk around HD 131488. We discover CO fundamental emission indicating the presence of warm fluorescent gas within $\sim10$ AU of the star. The…
The dominant sources of photoionizing radiation in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) incident on the exterior of the local interstellar clouds include two nearby early B-type stars, $\epsilon$ CMa ($124\pm2$ pc) and $\beta$ CMa ($151\pm5$ pc),…
We present a dynamical study of 39 active Centaurs and 17 high-perihelion (q$>$4.5 au) JFCs with a focus on investigating recent orbital changes as potential triggers for comet-like activity. We have identified a common feature in the…
While it is possible to estimate the dark matter density at the Sun distance from the galactic center, this does not give information on actual dark matter density in the Solar system. There can be considerable local enhancement of dark…