Related papers: Asteroid 2023 NT1: A Cautionary Tale
We propose to use a modest fraction of the re-purposed Kepler mission time and apertures to greatly increase the quantity and quality of our knowledge of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) rotation and shape. NEAs are important for understanding…
A new asteroid rotation period survey have been carried out by using the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF). Twelve consecutive PTF fields, which covered an area of 87 deg$^2$ in the ecliptic plane, were observed in $R$ band with a cadence of…
Near-Earth asteroid (NEA) 1566 Icarus ($a=1.08$ au, $e=0.83$, $i=22.8^{\circ}$) made a close approach to Earth in June 2015 at 22 lunar distances (LD). Its detection during the 1968 approach (16 LD) was the first in the history of asteroid…
We investigate the tidal disruption of a neutron star (NS) near a black hole (BH), and for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, near a naked singularity (NaS). For a BH with a mass greater than about $10 M_{\odot}$, the tidal…
Knowledge of the interior density distribution of an asteroid can reveal its composition and constrain its evolutionary history. However, most asteroid observational techniques are not sensitive to interior properties. We investigate the…
We observed the dynamically similar near-Sun asteroids 2021 PH27 and 2025 GN1 for their optical colors. These objects have the lowest known semi-major axes of any asteroids. 2021 PH27 has the largest general relativistic effects of any…
Asteroids colliding with planets vary in composition and taxonomical type. Among Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) are the V-types, basaltic asteroids that are classified via spectroscopic observations. In this work, we study the probability of…
We examine the development of the active asteroid 311P/PANSTARRS (formerly, 2013 P5) in the period from 2013 September to 2014 February using high resolution images from the Hubble Space Telescope. This multi-tailed object is characterized…
We present an automated and probabilistic method to make prediscovery detections of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) in archival survey images, with the goal of reducing orbital uncertainty immediately after discovery. We refit Minor Planet…
The DART spacecraft is planned to impact the secondary of the binary asteroid (65803) Didymos in 2022, to assess deflection strategies for planetary defense. The impact will create a crater and release asteroidal material, some of which…
Among the near-Earth object (NEO) population there are comets and active asteroids which are sources of fragments that initially move together; in addition, some NEOs follow orbits temporarily trapped in a web of secular resonances. These…
The discovery of 1991 VG on 1991 November 6 attracted an unprecedented amount of attention as it was the first near-Earth object (NEO) ever found on an Earth-like orbit. At that time, it was considered by some as the first representative of…
We present an automated system called NEORANGER that regularly computes asteroid-Earth impact probabilities for objects on the Minor Planet Center's (MPC) Near-Earth-Object Confirmation Page (NEOCP) and sends out alerts of imminent…
We report the confirmation of TOI-6324 b, an Earth-sized (1.059 $\pm$ 0.041 R$_\oplus$) ultra-short-period (USP) planet orbiting a nearby ($\sim$20 pc) M dwarf. Using the newly commissioned Keck Planet Finder (KPF) spectrograph, we have…
Context. Comet 46P/Wirtanen is a near-Earth object (NEO) for which no associated meteor shower has ever been reported. Aims. This study is aimed at improving our understanding of why there has been no observed shower activity for this NEO…
We are conducting a survey using twilight time on the Dark Energy Camera with the Blanco 4m telescope in Chile to look for objects interior to Earth's and Venus' orbits. To date we have discovered two rare Atira/Apohele asteroids, 2021 LJ4…
We have performed a detailed survey simulation of the LSST performance with regards to near-Earth objects (NEOs) using the project's current baseline cadence. The survey shows that if the project is able to reliably generate linked sets of…
Context. The Arjuna asteroid belt is loosely defined as a diverse group of small asteroids that follow dynamically cold, Earth-like orbits. Most of them are not actively engaged in resonant, co-orbital behavior with Earth. Some of them…
We describe active asteroid 331P/Gibbs (2012 F5) using archival Hubble Space Telescope data taken between 2015 and 2018. 331P is an outer main-belt active asteroid with a long-lived debris trail that formed in 2011. Embedded in the debris…
The recently discovered near-Earth asteroid 2021 PH27 has the shortest orbital period of all known asteroids. It cannot be excluded that 2021 PH27 is also an active asteroid, as (3200) Phaethon. We intend to estimate the consequences of…