Related papers: Hyperbolic meteors: is CNEOS 2014-01-08 interstell…

Without extensive maintenance, Dyson spheres inevitably disintegrate by asteroid impacts over billions of years. The resulting fragments would appear as anomalous interstellar objects, potentially sharing the unusual shape and motion of…

Space missions to NEOs are being planned at all major space agencies, and recently a manned mission to an NEO was announced as a NASA goal. Efforts to find and select suitable targets (plus backup targets) are severely hampered by our lack…

We have identified ten candidate intergalactic planetary nebulae in the Fornax galaxy cluster. These objects were found during observations in 1992 and 1993 in three fields chosen well away from any Fornax galaxy at 15 arcmin, 30 arcmin,…

Orbital debris presents a growing risk to space operations, and is becoming a significant source of contamination of astronomical images. Much of the debris population is uncatalogued, making the impact more difficult to assess. We present…

Recently, Anderson et al. presented possible evidence for an anomalous acceleration acting on spacecrafts. Furthermore, the motions of several planets and comets are known to experience unexplained disturbances. A transneptunian comet or…

Stellar occultations provide a powerful tool to explore objects of the outer solar system. The Gaia mission now provides milli-arcsec accuracy on the predictions of these events and makes possible observations that were previously…

Interstellar objects (ISOs) are small bodies that can travel through our solar system from other star systems. When present in our solar system, they represent an opportunity to study the properties and origins of these objects, as well as…

Photometric and spectroscopic observations of five nearly parabolic comets with eccentricity larger than 0.99 at heliocentric distances greater than 4 AU were performed. No molecular emission was observed for any studied comet and the…

Neutrinos, and primarily neutrino oscillations, have undoubtedly been one of the most exciting topics in the field of high-energy physics over the past few years. The existence of neutrino oscillations would require an extension of the…

Centaurs are small bodies orbiting in the giant planet region which were scattered inwards from their source populations beyond Neptune. Some members of the population display comet-like activity during their transition through the solar…

We investigate the possible origins of real high-inclination Centaurs and trans-neptunian objects using a high-resolution statistical search for stable orbits that simulates their evolution back in time to the epoch when planet formation…

In terms of scientific output, the best way to study solar system bodies is sending spacecraft to make in-situ measurements or to observe at close distance. Probably, the second best means to learn about important physical properties of…

To date, 241 individual molecular species, comprised of 19 different elements, have been detected in the interstellar and circumstellar medium by astronomical observations. These molecules range in size from two atoms to seventy, and have…

Diffuse and translucent molecular clouds fill a vast majority of the interstellar space in the galactic disk being thus the most typical objects of the Interstellar Medium (ISM). Recent advances in observational techniques of modern optical…

The Centaur (60558) Echeclus was discovered on March 03, 2000, orbiting between the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus. After exhibiting frequent outbursts, it also received a comet designation, 174P. If the ejected material can be a source of…

Various meteor and fireball networks exist worldwide. Most data sets which include ground-based observational data of meteors are affected by biases. The larger and faster the entering meteoroid, the brighter is the produced meteor. Hence,…

Ever since the discovery of neutron stars it has been realized that they serve as probes of a physical regime that cannot be accessed in laboratories: strongly degenerate matter at several times nuclear saturation density. Existing nuclear…

The dynamics of planetesimals in the circumbinary debris disc of the quadruple star system HD 98800 are investigated. Evolving a spherical shell of test particles from a million years ago to the present day indicates that both coplanar and…

Trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) are icy/rocky bodies that move beyond the orbit of Neptune in a region known as the trans-Neptunian belt (or Edgeworth-Kuiper belt). In contrast to the predictions of accretion models that feature…

Neptune's incomplete ring arcs have been stable since their discovery in 1984 by stellar occultation. Although these structures should be destroyed within a few months through differential Keplerian motion, imaging data over the past couple…