Related papers: Using Atmospheric Impact Data to Model Meteoroid C…
Every year, a few metre-sized meteoroids impact the atmosphere of the Earth. Most (if not all) of them are undetectable before the impact. Therefore, predicting where and how they will fall seems to be an impossible task. In this letter we…
Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are a transient population of small bodies with orbits near or in the terrestrial planet region. They represent a mid-stage in the dynamical cycle of asteroids and comets, which starts with their removal from the…
In the last decades Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) have become very important targets to study, since they can give us clues to the formation, evolution and composition of the Solar System. In addition, they may represent either a threat to…
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…
NASA's DART and ESA's Hera missions offer a unique opportunity to investigate the delivery of impact ejecta to other celestial bodies. We performed ejecta dynamical simulations using 3 million particles categorized into three size…
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 present a deep imaging and spectroscopic search for emission from (3200) Phaethon, a large near-Earth asteroid that appears to be the parent of the strong Geminid meteoroid stream, using the 4.3 m Lowell Discovery Telescope. Observations…
Geminids are the most active annual meteor shower observed on Earth. Their parent is an active asteroid, (3200) Phaethon, which is a target of the planned DESTINY+ mission of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The exact physical…
We introduce a novel search technique that can identify trans-neptunian objects in three to five exposures of a pointing within a single Hubble Space Telescope orbit. The process is fast enough to allow the discovery of candidates soon…
The paper discusses a model of the bombardment of the Earth and the Moon by small bodies when these planets were formed. It is shown that the total ice mass delivered with the bodies to the Earth from the feeding zone of the giant planets…
Studying materials released from Jupiter-family comets (JFCs) -- as seen in their inner com\ae, the envelope of gas and dust that forms as the comet approaches the Sun -- improves the understanding of their origin and evolutionary history.…
Context. (3200) Phaethon is a ~5-km-diameter near-Earth asteroid with a small perihelion distance of 0.14 au and is the parent body of the Geminids. JAXA's DESTINY+ mission will fly by Phaethon in the near future. Aims. We aim to support…
As of mid-2026, 11 objects have been discovered prior to impacting the Earth, with warning times between 2 - 20 hours. Using real metre-sized Earth impactors from the last decade, we ask the question: ``If the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's…
We estimate the total number and the slope of the size frequency distribution (SFD) of dormant Jupiter Family Comets (JFCs) by fitting a one-parameter model to the known population. We first select 61 Near Earth Objects (NEOs) that are…
In this paper we calculate the expected orbital elements, radiants, and velocities of Earth-impacting interstellar objects. We generate a synthetic population of $\sim10^{10}$ interstellar objects with M-star kinematics in order to obtain…
We have searched Microvariability and Oscillations of STars (MOST) satellite photometry obtained in 2004, 2005, and 2007 of the solar-type star HD 209458 for Trojan asteroid swarms dynamically coupled with the system's transiting "hot…
Since white dwarfs are small, the contrast between the thermal emission of an orbiting object and a white dwarf is dramatically enhanced compared to a main sequence host. Furthermore, rocky objects much smaller than the moon have no…
The observation of gaseous giant planets is of high scientific interest. Although they have been the targets of several spacecraft missions, there still remains a need for continuous ground-based observations. As their atmospheres present…
We present results from SEPPCoN, an on-going Survey of the Ensemble Physical Properties of Cometary Nuclei. In this report we discuss mid-infrared measurements of the thermal emission from 89 nuclei of Jupiter-family comets (JFCs). All data…
Jupiter-family Comets (JFCs) exhibit a wide range of activity levels and mass-loss over their orbits. We analyzed high-cadence observations of 42 active JFCs with the wide-field Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) survey…