Related papers: Reconstructing the late accretion history of the M…
The passive retroreflector arrays placed on the moon by Apollo 11, 14 and 15 astronauts continue to produce valuable Earth-Moon range measurements that enable high-precision tests of gravitational physics, as well as studies of geo- and…
Planetesimal accretion is a key source for heavy-element enrichment in giant planets. It has been suggested that Jupiter's enriched envelope is a result of planetesimal accretion during its growth assuming it formed in a massive…
We compare the number of lunar craters larger than 15 km across and younger than 1.1 Ga to the estimates of the number of craters that could have been formed for 1.1 Ga if the number of near-Earth objects and their orbital elements during…
MHD models and the observation of accretion streamers confirmed that protostars can undergo late accretion events after the initial collapse phase. To provide better constraints, we study the evolution of stellar masses in MHD simulations…
Impact craters, as "lunar fossils", are the most dominant lunar surface features and occupy most of the Moon's surface. Their formation and evolution record the history of the Solar System. Sixty years of triumphs in the lunar exploration…
We perform the first tests of various proposed explanations for observed features of the Moon's argon exosphere, including models of: spatially varying surface interactions; a source that reflects the lunar near-surface potassium…
We calculate the current spatial distribution of projectile delivery to the Earth and Moon using numerical orbital dynamics simulations of candidate impactors drawn from a debiased Near-Earth-Object (NEO) model. Surprisingly, we find that…
The cause for the difference in crustal thickness between the far and near sides of the moon has been considered an open problem in astronomy since 1959 when the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 sent back the first images of the lunar farside. The…
The efficiency of regolith production is key in understanding the properties of airless surfaces. Debris aprons, of fillets, around rocks are an ubiquitous morphology on many surfaces without atmosphere, which origin and evolution are…
Measurements of accretion rates onto planetary mass objects may distinguish between different planet formation mechanisms, which predict different accretion histories. In this Letter, we use \HST/WFC3 UVIS optical photometry to measure…
The origin of the supermassive black holes that power the most distant quasars observed is largely unknown. One hypothesis is that they grew rapidly from intermediate-mass seeds (~100 M_sun) left by the first stars. However, some previous…
A remarkable discovery of NASA's Kepler mission is the wide diversity in the average densities of planets of similar mass. After gas disk dissipation, fully formed planets could interact with nearby planetesimals from a remnant planetesimal…
We present a new method of quantifying a galaxy's accretion history from its integrated spectrum alone. Using full spectral fitting and calibrated regularization techniques we show how we can accurately derive a galaxy's mass distribution…
Recent advances in our understanding of the dynamical history of the Solar system have altered the inferred bombardment history of the Earth during accretion of the Late Veneer, after the Moon-forming impact. We investigate how the…
Accretion among planets is a poorly understood phenomenon, due to lack of both observational and theoretical studies. Detection of emission lines from accreting gas giants facilitate detailed investigations into this process. This work…
The flashes from meteoroid impacts on the Moon are useful in determining the flux of impactors with masses as low as a few tens of grams. A routine monitoring program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has recorded over 300 impacts…
Quantifying the energy budget of Earth in the first few million years following the Moon-forming giant impact is vital to understanding Earth's initial thermal state and the dynamics of lunar tidal evolution. After the impact, the body was…
Previous studies of the response of the Moon to gravitational waves have been carried out using analytical or semi-analytical models assuming ideal lunar structures. Such models are advantageous for their high-speed calculation but fail to…
The Giant Impact is currently accepted as the leading theory for the formation of Earth's Moon. Successful scenarios for lunar origin should be able to explain the chemical composition of the Moon (volatile content and stable isotope…
We exploit the [Mg/Mn]-[Al/Fe] chemical abundance plane to help identify nearby halo stars in the 14th data release from the APOGEE survey that have been accreted on to the Milky Way. Applying a Gaussian Mixture Model, we find a `blob' of…