Related papers: Low Albedos Among Extinct Comet Candidates

Hilda asteroids and Jupiter Trojans are two low-albedo (p$_{\rm v}$ ~ 0.07) populations for which the Nice model predicts an origin in the primordial Kuiper Belt region. However, recent surveys by WISE and the Spitzer Space Telescope (SST)…

The asteroid (21) Lutetia is the target of a planned close encounter by the Rosetta spacecraft in July 2010. To prepare for that flyby, Lutetia has been extensively observed by a variety of astronomical facilities. We used the Hubble Space…

Conditions for regolith landslides to occur on spinning, gravitating spheroidal asteroids and their aftermath are studied. These conditions are developed by application of classical granular mechanics stability analysis to the asteroid…

Here, we explore some peculiar orbital features of the recently discovered asteroid A/2017 U1, which is a clear outlier when considering the average value of the eccentricity of known hyperbolic comets. As for the orientation of its orbit…

The irregular satellites of the giant planets are believed to have been captured during the evolution of the solar system. Knowing their physical parameters, such as size, density, and albedo is important for constraining where they came…

Searching for the non-Trojan Jupiter co-orbitals we have numerically integrated orbits of 3\,160 asteroids and 24 comets discovered by October 2010 and situated within and close to the planet co-orbital region. Using this sample we have…

Phase curves of asteroids are typically considered to depend solely on the scattering properties of airless particulate surfaces and the size of the object being studied. In this study, we demonstrate the additional dependence of phase…

Photometry from the Helios and STEREO spacecraft revealed regions of enhanced sky surface-brightness suggesting a narrow circumsolar ring of dust associated with Venus's orbit. We model this phenomenon by integrating the orbits of…

In this work, we performed a dynamical analysis of a spacecraft around a nearly equal-mass binary near-Earth asteroid with application to the asteroid 2017 YE5, which is also a possible dormant Jupiter-family comet. Thus, we investigated…

The research about asteroids attracts more and more attention recently, especially focusing on their physical structures, such as the spin axis, the rotation period and the shape. The long distance between Earth observers and asteroids…

We present spectroscopic orbits for the active stars HD 82159 (GS Leo), HD 89959, BD +39 2587 (a visual companion to HD 112733), HD 138157 (OX Ser), HD 143705, and HD 160934. This paper is a sequel to one published in this journal in 2006,…

Near-Earth objects (NEOs) moving in resonant, Earth-like orbits are potentially important. On the positive side, they are the ideal targets for robotic and human low-cost sample return missions and a much cheaper alternative to using the…

We present our shape and rotational characterization of four near-Earth asteroids observed as part of the Visible NEAs Observations Survey. This work includes 61 new light curves obtained between 2020 June and 2024 September for asteroids…

We present the results of observational campaigns of asteroids performed at Asiago Station of Padova Astronomical Observatory and at M.G. Fracastoro Station of Catania Astrophysical Observatory, as part of the large research programme on…

Using the POLISH2 polarimeter at the Lick Observatory Shane 3-m and Nickel 1-m telescopes, we discover rotation phase-locked variations in linear polarization to be common among asteroids and a NEO in a clear, 383 to 720 nm bandpass.…

The orbital dynamics of a spacecraft orbiting around irregular small celestial bodies is a challenging problem. Difficulties to model the gravity field of these bodies arise from the poor knowledge of the exact shape as observed from the…

The near-Earth asteroid population suggests the existence of an inner Main Belt source of asteroids that belongs to the spectroscopic X-complex and has moderate albedos. The identification of such a source has been lacking so far. We argue…

We present absolute physical and orbital parameters for three double-lined detached eclipsing binary systems from the All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) catalogue with subgiant and giant components. These parameters were derived from archival…

Time-series photometry of the CoRoT field SRa01 was carried out with the Berlin Exoplanet Search Telescope II (BEST II) in 2008/2009. A total of 1,161 variable stars were detected, of which 241 were previously known and 920 are newly found.…

Binary systems comprise approximately 15 per cent of the near-Earth asteroid population, yet thermal-infrared data are often interpreted for these bodies as if they are single objects. Thermal-IR light curves of binary asteroids (3905)…