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Our knowledge of the strengths of small bodies in the Solar System is limited by our poor understanding of their internal structures, and this, in turn, clouds our understanding of the formation and evolution of these bodies. Observations…
New insights into the history of the inner solar system are derived from the impact cratering record of the Moon, Mars, Venus and Mercury, and from the size distributions of asteroid populations. Old craters from a unique period of heavy…
Context: Large all-sky surveys provide us with a lot of photometric data that are sparse in time (typically few measurements per night) and can be potentially used for the determination of shapes and rotational states of asteroids. The…
Although discs of dust and gas have been observed orbiting white dwarfs, the origin of this circumstellar matter is uncertain. We hypothesize that the in-situ breakup of small bodies such as asteroids spun to fission during the giant branch…
We have developed a theoretical description of how of an asteroid's polarization-phase curve will be affected by the removal of the dust from the surface due to a size-dependent phenomenon such as radiation pressure-driven escape of…
An asteroid family forms as a result of a collision between an impactor and a parent body. The fragments with ejection speeds higher than the escape velocity from the parent body can escape its gravitational pull. The cloud of escaping…
We present an analysis of new and published data on P/2013 R3, the first asteroid detected while disintegrating. Thirteen discrete components are measured in the interval between UT 2013 October 01 and 2014 February 13. We determine a mean,…
Giant planet migration appears widespread among planetary systems in our Galaxy. However, the timescales of this process, which reflect the underlying dynamical mechanisms, are not well constrained, even within the solar system. Since…
Observed planetary debris in white dwarf atmospheres predominately originate from the destruction of small bodies on highly eccentric ($>0.99$) orbits. Despite their importance, these minor planets have coupled physical and orbital…
All near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) that reach sufficiently small perihelion distances will undergo a so-called super-catastrophic disruption. The mechanisms causing such disruptions are currently unknown or, at least, undetermined. To help…
Asteroids are leftover pieces from the era of planet formation that help us understand conditions in the early Solar System. Unlike larger planetary bodies that were subject to global thermal modification during and subsequent to their…
Context. Rotational instability of rubble-pile asteroids can trigger mass shedding, forming transient debris clouds that may provide the initial conditions for secondary formation in binary systems. Aims. We investigate the dynamical and…
We studied the creep motion of granular materials in a gradient potential field that is created using a slow spin-up experiment device. Natural sand confined in the acrylic box is spun up by a controlled turntable and the surface flows are…
Exploration of asteroids and comets can give insight into the origins of the solar system and can be instrumental in planetary defence and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). Asteroids, due to their low gravity are a challenging target for…
The Gaia second data release contains high-accuracy astrometric measurements of thousands of solar system bodies. These measurements raise the possibility of determining asteroid masses by modeling scattering events between massive objects…
The main asteroid belt lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but the region is not uniformly filled with asteroids. There are gaps, known as the Kirkwood gaps, in the asteroid distribution in distinct locations that are associated…
Out of the handful of asteroids that have been imaged, some have distributions of blocks that are not easily explained. In this paper, we investigate the possibility that seismic shaking leads to the size sorting of particles in asteroids.…
Boulders are ubiquitously found on the surfaces of small rocky bodies in the inner solar system and their spatial and size distributions give insight into the geological evolution and collisional history of the parent bodies. Using images…
To date, rings are found around a Centaur (10199) Chariklo, trans-neptunian objects (TNOs) (136108) Haumea, and (50000) Quaoar. These discoveries suggest that asteroidal ring systems may be common, particularly in the outer solar system.…
Any population of asteroids, like asteroid families, will disperse in semi-major axis due to the Yarkovsky effect. The amount of drift is modulated by the asteroid spin state evolution which determines the balance between the diurnal and…