Related papers: Centaur Nuclei: Sizes, Shapes, Spins, and Structur…

The Centaur (10199) Chariklo has the first rings system discovered around a small object. It was first observed using stellar occultation in 2013. Stellar occultations allow the determination of sizes and shapes with kilometre accuracy and…

The field of exoplanetary science has seen discovery rates increase dramatically over recent years, due largely to the data from the Kepler mission. Even so, individual discoveries of planets orbiting nearby stars are very important for…

We report results from HST/NICMOS 2 micron imaging polarimetry of the central region of Centaurus A. In the vicinity of the nucleus we observe a complex polarization structure which we explain by a combination of scattering of nuclear light…

Centaurs are minor planets thought to have originated in the outer Solar System region known as the Kuiper Belt. Active Centaurs enigmatically display comet-like features (e.g., tails, comae) even though they orbit in the gas giant region…

Globular clusters (GCs) and many nuclear clusters (NCs) show evidence for hosting multiple generations of stellar populations. Younger stellar populations in NCs appear to reside in disk like structures, including the nuclear cluster in our…

For the first time, systematic studies of dwarf galaxies are being conducted throughout the Local Volume, including the dwarf satellites of the nearby giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128). Given Centaurus As mass (roughly ten…

Most comets are volatile-rich bodies that have recently entered the inner solar system following long-term storage in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud reservoirs. These reservoirs feed several distinct, short-lived "small body"…

We numerically study the dynamical evolution of observed samples of active and inactive Centaurs and clones that reach the Jupiter-Saturn region. Our aim is to compare the evolution between active and inactive Centaurs, their end states and…

Recent discoveries of circumbinary planets by Kepler mission provide motivation for understanding their birthplaces - protoplanetary disks around stellar binaries with separations <1 AU. We explore properties and evolution of such…

The origin of the highly eccentric, inclined, and resonance-locked orbit of Pluto has long been a puzzle. A possible explanation has been proposed recently [Malhotra, R., {\it Nature} 365:819-21 (1993)] which suggests that these…

Solar system Centaurs originate in transneptunian space from where planet orbit crossing events inject their orbits inside the giant planets' domain. Here, we examine this injection process in the three-body problem by studying the orbital…

Using data from the Deep Ecliptic Survey (DES), we investigate the inclination distributions of objects in the Kuiper Belt. We present a derivation for observational bias removal and use this procedure to generate unbiased inclination…

Thanks to J.~Schwinger, the process of elastic scattering of neutrons by nuclei is known to depend on the interference between a nuclear amplitude and an electromagnetic one for small scattering angles, resulting in spin asymmetries of a…

Young asteroid families are unique sources of information about fragmentation physics and the structure of their parent bodies, since their physical properties have not changed much since their birth. Families have different properties such…

We examine the properties of embedded clusters within 1 kiloparsec using new data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, as well as recent results from 2MASS and other ground-based near-infrared surveys. We use surveys of entire molecular clouds…

We present multiband photometric observations of nine Centaurs. Five of the targets are known active Centaurs (167P/CINEOS, 174P/Echeclus, P/2008 CL94, P/2011 S1, and C/2012 Q1), and the other four are inactive Centaurs belonging to the…

It has long been assumed that the planet Jupiter acts as a giant shield, significantly lowering the impact rate of minor bodies upon the Earth, and thus enabling the development and evolution of life in a collisional environment which is…

Explaining the origin of the orbit of 2000 CR105 (a ~ 230AU, q ~ 45AU) is a major test for our understanding of the primordial evolution of the outer Solar System. Gladman et al. (2001) showed that this objects could not have been a normal…

We numerically investigate the possibility that a close stellar encounter could account for the high inclinations of the Kuiper belt, as originally proposed by Ida, Larwood and Burkert, however we consider encounters with pericenters within…

Comets offer valuable insights into the early Solar System's conditions and processes. Stellar occultations enables detailed study of cometary nuclei typically hidden by their coma. Observing the star's light passing through the coma helps…