Related papers: Satellite formation around the largest asteroids
The asteroid belt is a unique source of information on some of the most important questions facing solar system science. These questions include the sizes, numbers, types and orbital distributions of the planetesimals that formed the…
We trace the cosmological origin of satellites around a dwarf galaxy using a very high resolution (12~pc/h) cosmological hydrodynamic zoom simulation. To realistically describe the formation and evolution of small-mass stellar satellites,…
Motivated by the New Horizons mission, we consider how Pluto's small satellites -- currently Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra -- grow in debris from the giant impact that forms the Pluto-Charon binary. After the impact, Pluto and Charon…
Using the spectroscopic catalogue of the Sloan Digital Survey Data Release 10, we have explored the abundance of satellites around a sample of 254 massive (10^11< M_star < 2 x 10^11 M_sun) local (z < 0.025) galaxies. We have divided our…
We investigate the evolution of a population of 100 dark matter satellites orbiting in the gravitational potential of a realistic model of M31. We find that after 10 Gyr, seven subhalos are completely disrupted by the tidal field of the…
This study examines the rotational characteristics of asteroids through statistical modeling of the diameter-period relationship. A statistical evaluation of the diameter-period relationship was conducted using a dataset of 34,326…
Gas giant planets have been detected on eccentric orbits several hundreds of astronomical units in size around other stars. It has been proposed that even the Sun hosts a wide-orbit planet of 5-10 Earth masses, often called Planet Nine,…
Most main-belt asteroids are primitive rock and metal bodies in orbit about the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Disruption, through high velocity collisions or rotational spin-up, is believed to be the primary mechanism for the production and…
Saturn is the only known planet to have coorbital satellite systems. In the present work we studied the process of mass accretion as a possible mechanism for coorbital satellites formation. The system considered is composed of Saturn, a…
We consider the formation of satellites around the Pluto-Charon binary. An early collision between the two partners likely produced the binary and a narrow ring of debris, out of which arose the moons Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra. How the…
In recent years, nine small near-Earth asteroids were discovered a few hours before the collision with the Earth: these are about one meter in diameter objects that have all disintegrated in the atmosphere, generating bright fireballs…
We develop a fourth-order numerical integrator to simulate the coupled spin and orbital motions of two rigid bodies having arbitrary mass distributions under the influence of their mutual gravitational potential. We simulate the dynamics of…
The origin of the irregular satellites of the giant planets has been long debated since their discovery. Their dynamical features argue against an in-situ formation suggesting they are captured bodies, yet there is no global consensus on…
We have investigated the dependence of the prograde/retrograde temporary capture of asteroids by a planet on their original heliocentric semimajor axes through analytical arguments and numerical orbital integrations in order to discuss the…
Minor merging has been postulated as the most likely evolutionary path to produce the increase in size and mass observed in the massive galaxies since z$\sim$2. In this Letter, we test directly this hypothesis comparing the population of…
Rotationally fissioned asteroids produce unbound daughter asteroids that have very similar heliocentric orbits. Backward integration of their current heliocentric orbits provides an age of closest proximity that can be used to date the…
The overall shape, internal structure and surface morphology of small bodies such as asteroids and comets are determined to a large degree by the last global-scale impact or disruption event. Depending on the specific energy, impacts lead…
We investigated the probability that an inelastic collision of planetesimals within the Hill sphere of the Jovian planets could explain the presence and orbits of observed irregular satellites. Capture of satellites via this mechanism is…
It is believed that satellites of giant planets form in circumplanetary disks. Many of the previous contributions assumed that their formation process proceeds similarly to rocky planet formation, via accretion of the satellite seeds,…
We use N-body simulations to study the infall of dark matter haloes onto rich clusters of galaxies. After identification of all cluster progenitors in the simulations, we select those haloes which accrete directly onto the main cluster…