Related papers: El Bahr: A Prospective Impact Crater
We have analysed the orbits and ablation characteristics in the atmosphere of 59 earth-impacting fireballs, produced by meteoroids one meter in diameter or larger, described here as meter-scale. Using heights at peak luminosity as a proxy…
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft discovered fields of sub-parallel sets of steep ridges situated in the high-altitude, low-latitude regions in Pluto's encounter hemisphere called 'bladed terrain'. Thought to be formed due to sublimational…
During lunar eclipse of January 21, 2019 a meteoroid impacted the Moon producing a visible light flash. The impact was witnessed by casual observers offering an opportunity to study the phenomenon from multiple geographical locations. We…
Apollo meteoroid 2018 LA has become only the third natural object ever to be discovered prior to causing a meteor airburst and just the second one to have its meteorites recovered (at Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve). Here, we use…
We searched for a fast moving H$\alpha$ shell around the Crab nebula. Such a shell could account for this supernova remnant's missing mass, and carry enough kinetic energy to make SN 1054 a normal Type II event. Deep H$\alpha$ images were…
I find evidence for clustering in age of well-dated impact craters over the last 500 Myr. At least nine impact episodes are identified, with durations whose upper limits are set by the dating accuracy of the craters. Their amplitudes and…
The recent observation of the shadow of the supermassive compact object M87$^*$ by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration has opened up a new window to probe the strong gravity regime. In this paper, we study shadows cast by two…
The orbits of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) can indicate the existence of an undiscovered planet in the outer solar system. Here, we used N-body computer simulations to investigate the effects of a hypothetical Kuiper Belt planet (KBP) on…
A fast radio burst (FRB) was recently detected to be associated with a hard X-ray burst from the Galactic magnetar SGR 1935+2154. Scenarios involving magnetars for FRBs are hence highly favored. In this work, we suggest that the impact…
Systematic geomorphological mapping and detailed landform analysis using the highest resolution images obtained by the New Horizons spacecraft reveal the presence of a range of differentiable terrains on Charon, the largest moon of Pluto,…
We have performed a simulation of a next generation sky survey's (Pan-STARRS 1) efficiency for detecting Earth-impacting asteroids. The steady-state sky-plane distribution of the impactors long before impact is concentrated towards small…
In theory, burst activity of the magnetar can lead to the formation of fireballs trapped by the magnetic field and corotating with the star. However, the smoking-gun observational evidence of the fireball is elusive. We envisage that the…
We have developed a model-independent analytical method for debiasing the four-dimensional (a,e,i,H) distribution obtained in any asteroid observation program and have applied the technique to results obtained with the 0.9m Spacewatch…
We present Hubble Space Telescope Observations of (596) Scheila during its recent dust outburst. The nucleus remained point-like with absolute magnitude V(1,1,0) = 8.85+/-0.02 in our data, equal to the pre-outburst value, with no secondary…
The Cold Classical Kuiper Belt, a class of small bodies in undisturbed orbits beyond Neptune, are primitive objects preserving information about Solar System formation. The New Horizons spacecraft flew past one of these objects, the 36 km…
Over the past few years, astronomers have detected thousands of planets and candidate planets by observing their periodic transits in front of their host stars. Related methods might soon allow studies of the chemical imprints of life in…
The Hayabusa2 mission impact experiment on asteroid Ryugu created an unexpectedly large crater. The associated regime of low-gravity, low-strength cratering remained largely unexplored so far, because these impact conditions cannot be…
A group of newly observed extreme trans-Neptunian objects exhibit unexpected orbital confinement, characterized by the alignment of orbital angular momentum vectors and apsidal lines. It is proposed that an undiscovered giant planet, named…
The search for Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) emission in the energy range 1-100 GeV in coincidence with the satellite detection has been carried out using the Astrophysical Radiation with Ground-based Observatory at YangBaJing (ARGO-YBJ)…
We report on Spitzer Space Telescope IRAC observations of near-Earth object (NEO) 2009 BD that were carried out in support of the NASA Asteroid Robotic Retrieval Mission (ARRM) concept. We did not detect 2009 BD in 25 hrs of integration at…