相关论文: The brittle boulders of dwarf planet Ceres
The surface conditions of terrestrial bodies strongly reflect their geological evolutionary processes and vary among various terrestrial bodies. This diversity is attributed to variations in the timescales of boulder formation through…
Dawn's framing camera observed boulders on the surface of Vesta when the spacecraft was in its lowest orbit (LAMO). We identified, measured, and mapped boulders in LAMO images, which have a scale of 20 m per pixel. We estimate that our…
Dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the Main Asteroid Belt, has a surface that exhibits a range of crater densities for a crater diameter range of 5-300 km. In all areas the shape of the craters' size-frequency distribution is very…
Context: The dwarf planet (1) Ceres - next target of the NASA Dawn mission - is the largest body in the asteroid main belt; although several observations of this body have been performed so far, the presence of surface water ice is still…
We study the physical characteristics (shape, dimensions, spin axis direction, albedo maps, mineralogy) of the dwarf-planet Ceres based on high-angular resolution near-infrared observations. We analyze adaptive optics J/H/K imaging…
Low-albedo asteroids preserve a record of the primordial solar system planetesimals and the conditions in which the solar nebula was active. However, the origin and evolution of these asteroids are not well-constrained. Here we measured…
We study the surface of Ceres at visible wavelengths, as observed by the Visible and InfraRed mapping spectrometer (VIR) onboard the Dawn spacecraft, and analyze the variations of various spectral parameters across the whole surface. We…
Boulders on the surfaces of planets, satellites and small bodies, as well as their geological associations, provide important information about surface processes. We analyzed all available images of the surface of Mercury that have…
Ceres, the dwarf planet in the main asteroid belt, hosts heavily cratered surfaces where craters are continuously eroded mainly due to impact bombardment with a limited influence by non-impact processes. Over continuous bombardment, such…
Variations and spatial distributions of bright and dark material on dwarf planet Ceres play a key role in understanding the processes that have led to its present surface composition. We define limits for bright and dark material in order…
Ceres is the largest and most massive body in the asteroid main belt. Observational data from the Dawn spacecraft reveal the presence of at least two impact craters about 280~km in diameter on the Ceres surface, that could have expelled a…
The ice-rich dwarf planet Ceres is the largest object in the main asteroid belt and is thought to have a brine or mud layer at a depth of tens of kilometers. Furthermore, recent surface deposits of brine-sourced material imply shallow…
Ceres is the largest body in the Main Belt, and it is characterized by a large abundance of water ice in its interior. This feature is suggested by its relatively low bulk density (2162 kg m$^{-3}$), while its partial differentiation into a…
The Dwarf Planet Ceres revealed the presence of ammonia and other unique properties compared to other asteroids in the main belt which suggests that it was not formed in situ. We model the early dynamical evolution of the outer Solar System…
Boulders are ubiquitously found on the surfaces of small rocky bodies in the inner solar system and their spatial and size distributions give insight into the geological evolution and collisional history of the parent bodies. Using images…
The last three decades the asteroid (1) Ceres is an object of the intensive ground-and space-based observations. A new unusual contributing to these studies represents the recent detection of localized sources of water vapour releasing from…
Many asteroids show indications they have undergone impacts with meteoroid particles having radii between 0.01 m and 1 m. During such impacts, small dust grains will be ejected at the impact site. The possibility of these dust grains (with…
The dwarf planet Ceres is likely differentiated similar to the terrestrial planets but with a water/ice dominated mantle and an aqueously altered crust. Detailed modeling of Ceres' phase function has never been performed to understand its…
Previous observations suggested that Ceres has active but possibly sporadic water outgassing, and possibly varying spectral characteristics in a time scale of months. We used all available data of Ceres collected in the past three decades…
(1) Ceres, the largest reservoir of water in the main-belt, was recently visited by the Dawn spacecraft that revealed several areas bearing H$_2$O-ice features. Independent telescopic observations showed a water exosphere of currently…