Related papers: Comets and meteor showers
The solar atmosphere is full of complicated transients manifesting the reconfiguration of solar magnetic field and plasma. Solar jets represent collimated, beam-like plasma ejections; they are ubiquitous in the solar atmosphere and…
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…
Conditions in the protosolar nebula have left their mark in the composition of cometary volatiles, thought to be some of the most pristine material in the solar system. Cometary compositions represent the end point of processing that began…
Meteoroids of a low-inclination stream hit the Earth arriving from a direction near the ecliptic. The radiant area of stream like this is often divided into two parts: one is situated northward and the other southward of the ecliptic. In…
The organization of the orbits of most minor bodies in the Solar system seems to follow random patterns, the result of billions of years of chaotic dynamical evolution. Much as heterogeneous orbital behaviour is ubiquitous, dynamically…
As a recently recognized class of objects exhibiting apparently cometary (sublimation-driven) activity yet orbiting completely within the main asteroid belt, main-belt comets (MBCs) have revealed the existence of present-day ice in small…
The small bodies in the Kuiper Belt region of the distant Solar System are leftovers from planet formation. Their orbital distribution today tells us about how giant planets migrated, while their surface properties, shapes, and sizes tell…
A fundamental question in cometary science is whether the different dynamical classes of comets have different chemical compositions, which would reflect different initial conditions. From the ground or Earth orbit, radio and infrared…
We describe how meteors recorded at the Earth can be used to partly reconstruct the meteoroid environments of the planets if a large sample (i.e. millions of orbits at a minimum) is available. The process involves selecting from the…
The study of the last stages of planet formation, also known as debris disks, is fundamental to place constrains on the formation of planetary sized bodies. Debris disks are composed of dust and occasionally small amounts of gas, both…
There is an unceasing incoming flux of extraterrestrial materials reaching the Earth's atmosphere. Some of these objects produce luminous columns when they ablate during the hypersonic encounter with air molecules. A few fireballs occur…
Meteoroids are pieces of asteroids and comets. They serve as unique probes to the physical and chemical properties of their parent bodies. We can derive some of these properties when meteoroids collide with the atmosphere of Earth and…
Comets contain abundant amounts of organic and inorganic species. Many of the volatile molecules in comets have also been observed in the interstellar medium and some of them even with similar relative abundances, indicating formation under…
December Monocerotids and November Orionids are weak but established annual meteor showers active throughout November and December. Analysis of a high quality orbits subset of the SonotaCo video meteor database shows that the distribution…
Although the risk posed to spacecraft due to meteoroid impacts is dominated by sporadic meteoroids, meteor showers can raise this risk for short periods of time. NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office issues meteor shower forecasts that…
An asteroid family is typically formed when a larger parent body undergoes a catastrophic collisional disruption, and as such family members are expected to show physical properties that closely trace the composition and mineralogical…
The unexpected finding of a ring system around the Centaur (10199) Chariklo opened a new window for dynamical studies and posed many questions about the formation and evolutionary mechanisms of Centaurs as well as the relationship to…
Dormant comets in the near-Earth object (NEO) population are thought to be involved in the terrestrial accretion of water and organic materials. Identification of dormant comets is difficult as they are observationally indistinguishable…
Periodic comets of different dynamical groups with orbits at 2 - 5 AU still occasionally active. The observed dust activity of such objects can be connected with processes of water ice sublimation (MBCs) or crystallization of amorphous…
Jupiter family comets contribute a significant amount of debris to near-Earth space. However, telescopic observations of these objects seem to suggest they have short physical lifetimes. If this is true, the material generated will also be…