Related papers: A Deep Search for Stable Venus Co-Orbital Asteroid…
Interior to the orbit of Mercury, between 0.07 and 0.21 AU, is a dynamically stable region where a population of asteroids, known as Vulcanoids, may reside. We present the results from our search for Vulcanoids using archival data from the…
We investigate four young, but non-accreting, very low mass stars in Orion, which show irregular eclipses by circumstellar dust. The eclipses are not recurring periodically, are variable in depth, lack a flat bottom, and their duration is…
Many asteroids show indications they have undergone impacts with meteoroid particles having radii between 0.01 m and 1 m. During such impacts, small dust grains will be ejected at the impact site. The possibility of these dust grains (with…
Numerical modeling has long suggested that gravitationally-bound (or so-called rubble-pile) near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) can be destroyed by tidal forces during close and slow encounters with terrestrial planets. However, tidal disruptions…
A circumsolar dust ring has been recently discovered close to the orbit of Mercury. There are currently no hypotheses for the origin of this ring in the literature, so we explore four different origin scenarios here: the dust originated…
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…
From adaptive optics observations with the Palomar 5-meter telescope we place upper limits on the masses of any planetary companions located between ~30-230 AU away from Vega, where our data are sensitive to depths ranging from H=12.5 mag…
Thermal infrared observations are the most effective way to measure asteroid diameter and albedo for a large number of near-Earth objects. Major surveys like NEOWISE, NEOSurvey, ExploreNEOs, and NEOLegacy find a small fraction of high…
While of order a million asteroids have been discovered, the number in rigorously controlled samples that have precise orbits and rotation periods, as well as well-measured colors, is relatively small. In particular, less than a dozen…
Close encounters of Near Earth Objects (NEOs) with large asteroids are a possible source of systematic errors in trajectory propagations and asteroid mitigation. It is, thus, necessary to identify those large asteroids that have to be…
Close to the Roche radius of a white dwarf (WD), an asteroid on a circular orbit sheds material that then adopts a very similar orbit. Observations of the resulting debris show a periodic behavior and changes in flux on short timescales,…
Earth's temporarily-captured orbiters (TCOs) are a sub-population of near-Earth objects (NEOs). TCOs can provide constraints for NEO population models in the 1--10-metre-diameter range, and they are outstanding targets for in situ…
Context. Mars-crossing asteroids (MCs) are a dynamically unstable group between the main belt and the near-Earth populations. Characterising the physical properties of a large sample of MCs can help to understand the original sources of…
We estimate the total population of near-Earth objects (NEOs) in the Solar System, using an extensive, `Solar System to pixels' fake-asteroid simulation to debias detections of real NEOs by the ATLAS survey. Down to absolute magnitudes…
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…
We observed asteroid (596) Scheila and its ejecta cloud using the Swift UV-optical telescope. We obtained photometry of the nucleus and the ejecta, and for the first time measured the asteroid's reflection spectrum between 290 - 500 nm. Our…
We investigate the long-term dynamical survival of Earth co-orbital asteroids, focusing on near-circular, near-planar orbits which existing studies suggest are the most stable. Through numerical integration of test particles we show that…
Up to now, most planet search projects have concentrated on F to K stars. In order to considerably widen the view, we have stated a survey for planets of old, nearby brown dwarfs and very low mass stars. Using UVES, we have observed 26…
We numerically investigate the migration of dust particles with initial orbits close to those of the numbered asteroids. The fraction of silicate particles that collided with the Earth during their lifetimes varied from 0.2% for 40 micron…
We report the results of a spectroscopic search for debris disks surrounding 41 nearby solar type stars, including 8 planet-bearing stars, using the {\it Spitzer Space Telescope}. With accurate relative photometry using the Infrared…