Related papers: Asteroid lightcurves and detection, shape, and siz…
We show that Earth mass planets orbiting stars in the Galactic disk and bulge can be detected by monitoring microlensed stars in the Galactic bulge. The star and its planet act as a binary lens which generates a lightcurve which can differ…
The moniker rubble pile is typically applied to all solar system bodies with Diameter between 200m and 10km - where in this size range there is an abundance of evidence that nearly every object is bound primarily by self-gravity with…
The available set of spin and shape modelled asteroids is strongly biased against slowly rotating targets and those with low lightcurve amplitudes. As a consequence of these selection effects, the current picture of asteroid spin axis…
Space astrometry is capable of sub-microarcsecond measurements of star positions. A hundred visits over several years could yield relative astrometric precision of ~0.1 uas, below the astrometric signature (0.3 uas) of a Sun-Earth system at…
Using a fully autonomous spacecraft - Bering - we propose to detect and study sub-km asteroids from an orbit within the asteroid Main Belt. The main purpose of the proposed Bering mission is to detect a statistically significant sample of…
The light curve of an exoplanetary transit can be used to estimate the planetary radius and other parameters of interest. Because accurate parameter estimation is a non-analytic and computationally intensive problem, it is often useful to…
We investigate the prospects for characterizing extrasolar giant planets by measuring planetary oblateness from transit photometry and inferring planetary rotational periods. The rotation rates of planets in the solar system vary widely,…
Through multiple, small unmanned probes we can more efficiently capture an asteroid and return it to lunar orbit. The Asteroid Return and Exploration System (ARES) aims to make use of previously tested technology with the application of a…
The large brightness variation in the observed lightcurve of Oumuamua is probably related to its shape, i.e., to the ratio between its longest axis and its shortest axis (aspect ratio). Several approaches found the aspect ratio of Oumuamua…
(Abridged) The solar system gas giant planets are oblate due to their rapid rotation. A measurement of the planet's projected oblateness would constrain the planet's rotational period. Planets that are synchronously rotating with their…
Asteroids with companions constitute an excellent sample for studying the collisional and dynamical evolution of minor planets. The currently known binary population were discovered by different complementary techniques that produce, for…
Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) with small perihelion distances reach sub-solar temperatures of > 1000 K. They are hypothesized to undergo "super-catastrophic" disruption, potentially caused by near-Sun processes such as thermal cracking,…
This article addresses the challenge of vision-based proximity navigation in asteroid exploration missions and on-orbit servicing. Traditional feature extraction methods struggle with the significant appearance variations of asteroids due…
There are growing amount of very high-resolution polarized scattered light images of circumstellar disks. Nascent giant planets planets are surrounded by their own circumplanetary disks which may scatter and polarize both the planetary and…
More than 100 tidal disruption events (TDEs) have been detected at multi-bands, which can be viewed as extreme laboratories to investigate the accretion physics and gravity in the immediate vicinity of massive black holes. Future transient…
Microlensed stars recently discovered by JWST & HST follow closely the winding critical curve of A370 along all sections of the ``Dragon Arc" traversed by the critical curve. These transients are fainter than $m_{AB}>26.5$, corresponding to…
This paper presents a new strategy for observing faint galaxies with high order natural guide star systems. We have imaged 5 high galactic latitude fields within the isoplanatic patch of bright stars (8.5 < R < 10.3 mag). The fields provide…
A standard binary microlensing event lightcurve allows just two parameters of the lensing system to be measured: the mass ratio of the companion to its host, and the projected separation of the components in units of the Einstein radius.…
Radio wavelength astrometry of stars and other objects has a long and productive history. The use of that technique to determine whether stars have planets around them would cover a nearly unique part of the parameter space for detection of…
A trending astronomical phenomenon to study is the variation in brightness of asteroids, caused by its rotation on its own axis, non-spherical shapes, changes of albedo along its surface and its position relative to the sun. The latter…