Related papers: Cryogenic Cometary Sample Return
Recent high-sensitivity observations carried out with ALMA have revealed the presence of complex organic molecules (COMs) such as methyl cyanide (CH$_{\rm 3}$CN) and methanol (CH$_{\rm 3}$OH) in relatively evolved protoplanetary discs. The…
Comets are a rich reservoir of complex organic molecules. Ground and space-based observatories have recently greatly enhanced the cometary molecular inventory. Although these molecules' origin is believed to be the cometary nucleus, they…
(Abridged) Aims & Methods. A two-dimensional, semi-analytical model is presented that follows, for the first time, the chemical evolution from a collapsing molecular cloud (a pre-stellar core) to a protostar and circumstellar disk. The…
The goal of Project GAUSS is to return samples from the dwarf planet Ceres. Ceres is the most accessible ocean world candidate and the largest reservoir of water in the inner solar system. It shows active cryovolcanism and hydrothermal…
Icy bodies may have delivered the oceans to the early Earth, yet little is known about water in the ice-dominated regions of extra-solar planet-forming disks. The Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared on-board the Herschel Space…
Comets are made of volatile and refractory material and naturally experience various degrees of sublimation as they orbit around the Sun. This gas release, accompanied by dust, represents what is traditionally described as activity.…
Interstellar objects provide a unique opportunity to further our understanding of the planetary formation process by studying in detail material formed around another star. Their ices contain precious clues about the environment and…
Interstellar comets offer direct samples of volatiles from distant protoplanetary disks. 2I/Borisov is the first notably active interstellar comet discovered in our solar system[1]. Comets are condensed samples of the gas, ice, and dust…
Asteroids and comets are remnants from the era of Solar System formation over 4.5 billion years ago, and therefore allow us to address two fundamental questions in astronomy: what was the nature of our protoplanetary disk, and how did the…
Molecular oxygen has been detected in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko with abundances in the 1-10% range by the ROSINA-DFMS instrument on board the Rosetta spacecraft. Here we find that the radiolysis of icy grains in…
In this chapter, we review the processes involved in the formation of planetesimals and comets. We will start with a description of the physics of dust grain growth and how this is mediated by gas-dust interactions in planet-forming disks.…
A novel explanation for the origin of the cometary globules within NGC 7293 (the "Helix" planetary nebula) is examined; that these globules originate as massive cometary bodies at large astrocentric radii. The mass of such hypothetical…
Hypervolatile species such as carbon monoxide (CO) and molecular nitrogen (N2) have been detected in comets, and could be used to constrain comet formation temperature conditions if their presence is due to freeze-out and/or entrapment.…
Presolar grains in meteorites and interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) carry non-solar isotopic signatures pointing to origins in supernovae, giant stars, and possibly other stellar sources. There have been suggestions that some of these…
Context. The dynamical evolution of near-parabolic comets strongly depends on the starting values of the orbital elements derived from the positional observations. In addition, when drawing conclusions about the origin of these objects, it…
Context. Comets are small celestial bodies made of ice, dust, and rock that orbit the Sun. Understanding their behavior as they warm up at perihelion unveils many pieces of information about the interior and general morphology of the ices…
Crystalline silicates are found in a large number of comets. These pose a long-standing conundrum for solar system formation models as they can only be created in the inner hot disk at temperatures higher than 800 K, and there is no obvious…
The life-cycle of cosmic dust grains is far from being understood and the origin and evolution of interstellar medium (ISM) grains is still under debate. In the ISM, the cosmic dust destruction rate is faster than the production rate by…
Given the central role of carbon in the chemistry of life, it is a fundamental question as to how carbon is supplied to the Earth, in what form and when. We provide an accounting of carbon found in solar system bodies, in particular a…
We present some important conclusions from recent calculations pertaining to the collapse of rotating molecular cloud cores with axial symmetry, corresponding to evolution of young stellar objects through classes 0 and begin of class I.…