Related papers: Asteroid collisions: expected visibility and rate
We consider the long-term collisional and dynamical evolution of solid material orbiting in a narrow annulus near the Roche limit of a white dwarf. With orbital velocities of 300 km/sec, systems of solids with initial eccentricity $e…
Atmospheric heavy elements have been observed in more than a quarter of white dwarfs (WDs) at different cooling ages, indicating ongoing accretion of asteroidal material, whilst only a few per cent of the WDs possess a dust disk, and all…
The NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission performed a kinetic impact on asteroid Dimorphos, the satellite of the binary asteroid (65803) Didymos, at 23:14 UTC on September 26, 2022 as a planetary defense test. DART was the…
We fit 54,296 sparsely-sampled asteroid lightcurves in the Palomar Transient Factory to a combined rotation plus phase-function model. Each lightcurve consists of 20+ observations acquired in a single opposition. Using 805 asteroids in our…
Shock metamorphism in ordinary chondrites allows for reconstructing impact events between asteroids in the main asteroid belt. Shock-darkening of ordinary chondrites occurs at the onset of complete shock melting of the rock (>70 GPa) or…
If QCD axions form a large fraction of the total mass of dark matter, then axion stars could be very abundant in galaxies. As a result, collisions with each other, and with other astrophysical bodies, can occur. We calculate the rate and…
Strong encounters between single stars and binaries play a pivotal role in the evolution of star clusters. Such encounters can also dramatically modify the orbital parameters of binaries, exchange partners in and out of binaries, and are a…
We select 50 main-belt asteroids with a diameter between 20 and 400 km for which we have (i) shape models derived by the lightcurve inversion method (LI) and (ii) resolved observations of good quality collected with the Keck II adaptive…
We provide evidence of consistency between the dynamical evolution of main belt asteroids and their color evolution due to space weathering. The dynamical age of an asteroid's surface \citep{bib.bot05a,bib.nes05} is the time since its last…
Large or even medium sized asteroids impacting the Earth can cause damage on a global scale. Existing and planned concepts for finding near-Earth objects (NEOs) with diameter of 140 m or larger would take ~15-20 years of observation to find…
We consider a belt of small bodies around a star, captured in one of the external or 1:1 mean-motion resonances with a massive perturber. The objects in the belt collide with each other. Combining methods of celestial mechanics and…
We present analysis of the asteroid surface density distribution of main belt asteroids (mean perihelion $\Delta \simeq 2.404$ AU) in five ecliptic latitude fields, $-17 \gtsimeq \beta(\degr) \ltsimeq +15$, derived from deep \textit{Large…
Among asteroids there exist ambiguities in their rotation period determinations. They are due to incomplete coverage of the rotation, noise and/or aliases resulting from gaps between separate lightcurves. To help to remove such…
The distribution of orbital energies imparted into stellar debris following the close encounter of a star with a supermassive black hole is the principal factor in determining the rate of return of debris to the black hole, and thus in…
The rotational mass loss has been realized to be a prevalent mechanism to produce low-speed debris near the asteroid, and the size composition of the asteroid's surface regolith has been closely measured by in situ explorations. However,…
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…
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…
The catalog of km-sized near-Earth objects (NEOs) is nearly complete. Typical impact monitoring analyses search for possible impacts over the next 100 years and none of the km-sized objects represent an impact threat over that time…
The solar system is dusty, and would become dustier over time as asteroids collide and comets disintegrate, except that small debris particles in interplanetary space do not last long. They can be ejected from the solar system by Jupiter,…
Asteroid discoveries are essential for planetary-defense efforts aiming to prevent impacts with Earth, including the more frequent megaton explosions from decameter impactors. While large asteroids ($\geq$100 km) have remained in the main…