Related papers: Meteors: Light from Comets and Asteroids
Earth is constantly being bombarded with material from space. Most of the natural material end up being dust grains that litter the surface of Earth, but larger bodies are known to impact every few decades. The most recent large impact was…
As a recently recognized class of objects exhibiting apparently cometary (sublimation-driven) activity yet orbiting completely within the main asteroid belt, main-belt comets (MBCs) have revealed the existence of present-day ice in small…
Everyday thousands of meteoroids enter the Earth's atmosphere. The vast majority burn up harmlessly during the descent, but the larger objects survive, occasionally experiencing intense fragmentation events, and reach the ground. These…
We review the evidence for buried ice in the asteroid belt; specifically the questions around the so-called Main Belt Comets (MBCs). We summarise the evidence for water throughout the Solar System, and describe the various methods for…
Micrometeoroids (cosmic dust with size between a few $\mu$m and $\sim$1 mm) dominate the annual extraterrestrial mass flux to the Earth. We investigate the range of physical processes occurring when micrometeoroids traverse the atmosphere.…
A comet-like, but magnitudes smaller, extremely low albedo interstellar meteoroid population of fragile aggregates with solar type composition, measured in space and terrestrially, is most probably the universal dark matter. Although…
The Trojan asteroids provide a unique perspective on the history of Solar System. As a large population of small bodies, they record important gravitational interactions and dynamical evolution of the Solar System. In the past decade,…
Meteor and bolide phenomena caused by the atmospheric ablation of incoming meteoroids are predicted to occur at the planet Venus. Their systematic observation would allow to measure and compare the sub-mm to m meteoroid flux at different…
All the four giant planets in our Solar System have rings, but their characteristics are very different. The rings consist of a number of small particles, although individual particles have not been directly imaged. Near the central planet,…
Comets are important "eyewitnesses" of Solar System formation and evolution. Important tests to determine the chemical composition and to study the physical processes in cometary nuclei and coma need data in the UV range of the…
Stellar occultations and transits occur when a planetary body passes in front of a star (including our Sun). For objects with an atmosphere, refraction plays an essential role to explain the drops of flux and the aureoles observed during…
To date, three samples from near-Earth asteroids have been delivered to Earth by Japan's Hayabusa (2010) and Hayabusa2 (2020) missions, and the United States OSIRIS-REx mission (2023). Free from terrestrial contamination, these pristine…
Centaurs are objects whose orbits are found between those of the giant planets. They are supposed to originate mainly from the TransNeptunian objects, and they are among the sources of NearEarth Objects.TransNeptunian Objects (TNOs) cross…
As some of the most ancient materials in our Solar System, chondritic meteorites offer a valuable window into the early stages of planetary formation, particularly the accretion processes that built the most primitive asteroids. Until now,…
The Oort Cloud Comets (OCCs), exemplified by the Great Comet of 1997 (Hale-Bopp), are occasional visitors from the heatless periphery of the solar system. Previous works hypothesized that a great majority of OCCs must physically disrupt…
It is currently unknown whether solid particles larger than dust from supernova ejecta rain down on Earth at high speeds. We develop a hydrodynamic and radiative model to explore the detectability of $\gtrsim 1 \mathrm{\; mm}$…
A considerable amount of information regarding the processes that occurred during the accretion of the early planetesimals is still present among the small bodies of our solar system. A review of our current knowledge of the density of…
Jupiter family comets contribute a significant amount of debris to near-Earth space. However, telescopic observations of these objects seem to suggest they have short physical lifetimes. If this is true, the material generated will also be…
This concept article discusses the possibilities for identifying sedimentary-origin meteorites. The paper concerns (i) the macroscopic candidate for sedimentary meteorite in the epicenter of the 1908 Tunguska catastrophe; (ii) potential…
In its 16 years of scientific measurements, the Spitzer Space Telescope performed a number of ground-breaking infrared measurements of Solar System objects. In this second of two papers, we describe results from Spitzer observations of…