scholarly journals Meteoroids as One of the Sources for Exosphere Formation on Airless Bodies in the Inner Solar System

2021 ◽  
Vol 217 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Janches ◽  
Alexey A. Berezhnoy ◽  
Apostolos A. Christou ◽  
Gabriele Cremonese ◽  
Takayuki Hirai ◽  
...  

AbstractThis manuscript represents a review on progress made over the past decade concerning our understanding of meteoroid bombardment on airless solar system bodies as one of the sources of the formation of their exospheres. Specifically, observations at Mercury by MESSENGER and at the Moon by LADEE, together with progress made in dynamical models of the meteoroid environment in the inner solar system, offer new tools to explore in detail the physical phenomena involved in this complex relationship. This progress is timely given the expected results during the next decade that will be provided by new missions such as DESTINY+, BepiColombo, the Artemis program or the Lunar Gateway.

2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (14) ◽  
pp. 615-615
Author(s):  
Tetyana P. Sergeeva ◽  
Aleksandre V. Sergeev

The improvement of the dynamical models of solar system bodies’ motions will be very useful for the future space astrometry mission Gaia for a fast identification of objects, to discriminate between the well-known objects and the new ones. ‘Observations in the Past’ with plate archives allow realising it.


1962 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 133-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold C. Urey

During the last 10 years, the writer has presented evidence indicating that the Moon was captured by the Earth and that the large collisions with its surface occurred within a surprisingly short period of time. These observations have been a continuous preoccupation during the past years and some explanation that seemed physically possible and reasonably probable has been sought.


2020 ◽  
Vol 497 (1) ◽  
pp. L46-L49 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Morbidelli ◽  
K Batygin ◽  
R Brasser ◽  
S N Raymond

ABSTRACT In two recent papers published in MNRAS, Namouni and Morais claimed evidence for the interstellar origin of some small Solar system bodies, including: (i) objects in retrograde co-orbital motion with the giant planets and (ii) the highly inclined Centaurs. Here, we discuss the flaws of those papers that invalidate the authors’ conclusions. Numerical simulations backwards in time are not representative of the past evolution of real bodies. Instead, these simulations are only useful as a means to quantify the short dynamical lifetime of the considered bodies and the fast decay of their population. In light of this fast decay, if the observed bodies were the survivors of populations of objects captured from interstellar space in the early Solar system, these populations should have been implausibly large (e.g. about 10 times the current main asteroid belt population for the retrograde co-orbital of Jupiter). More likely, the observed objects are just transient members of a population that is maintained in quasi-steady state by a continuous flux of objects from some parent reservoir in the distant Solar system. We identify in the Halley-type comets and the Oort cloud the most likely sources of retrograde co-orbitals and highly inclined Centaurs.


2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (T26A) ◽  
pp. 153-160
Author(s):  
Giovanni B. Valsecchi ◽  
Julio A. Fernández ◽  
J.-E. Arlot ◽  
E.L.G. Bowell ◽  
Y. Chernetenko ◽  
...  

The past triennium has continued to see a huge influx of astrometric positions of small solar system bodies provided by near-Earth object (NEO) surveys. As a result, the size of the orbital databases of all populations of small solar system bodies continues to increase dramatically, and this in turn allows finer and finer analyses of the types of motion in various regions of the orbital elements space.


Author(s):  
M. A. (Tony) Barry ◽  
Dave Gault ◽  
Hristo Pavlov ◽  
William Hanna ◽  
Alistair McEwan ◽  
...  

AbstractStellar occultations by asteroids and outer solar system bodies can offer ground based observers with modest telescopes and camera equipment the opportunity to probe the shape, size, atmosphere, and attendant moons or rings of these distant objects. The essential requirements of the camera and recording equipment are: good quantum efficiency and low noise; minimal dead time between images; good horological faithfulness of the image timestamps; robustness of the recording to unexpected failure; and low cost. We describe an occultation observing and recording system which attempts to fulfil these requirements and compare the system with other reported camera and recorder systems. Five systems have been built, deployed, and tested over the past three years, and we report on three representative occultation observations: one being a 9 ± 1.5 s occultation of the trans-Neptunian object 28978 Ixion (mv =15.2) at 3 seconds per frame; one being a 1.51 ± 0.017 s occultation of Deimos, the 12 km diameter satellite of Mars, at 30 frames per second; and one being a 11.04 ± 0.4 s occultation, recorded at 7.5 frames per second, of the main belt asteroid 361 Havnia, representing a low magnitude drop (Δmv = ~0.4) occultation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 643 ◽  
pp. A146
Author(s):  
J. I. González Hernández ◽  
R. Rebolo ◽  
L. Pasquini ◽  
G. Lo Curto ◽  
P. Molaro ◽  
...  

Context. The general theory of relativity predicts the redshift of spectral lines in the solar photosphere as a consequence of the gravitational potential of the Sun. This effect can be measured from a solar disk-integrated flux spectrum of the Sun’s reflected light on Solar System bodies. Aims. The laser frequency comb (LFC) calibration system attached to the HARPS spectrograph offers the possibility of performing an accurate measurement of the solar gravitational redshift (GRS) by observing the Moon or other Solar System bodies. Here, we analyse the line shift observed in Fe absorption lines from five high-quality HARPS-LFC spectra of the Moon. Methods. We selected an initial sample of 326 photospheric Fe lines in the spectral range between 476–585 nm and measured their line positions and equivalent widths (EWs). Accurate line shifts were derived from the wavelength position of the core of the lines compared with the laboratory wavelengths of Fe lines. We also used a CO5BOLD 3D hydrodynamical model atmosphere of the Sun to compute 3D synthetic line profiles of a subsample of about 200 spectral Fe lines centred at their laboratory wavelengths. We fit the observed relatively weak spectral Fe lines (with EW< 180 mÅ) with the 3D synthetic profiles. Results. Convective motions in the solar photosphere do not affect the line cores of Fe lines stronger than about ∼150 mÅ. In our sample, only 15 Fe I lines have EWs in the range 150< EW(mÅ) < 550, providing a measurement of the solar GRS at 639 ± 14 m s−1, which is consistent with the expected theoretical value on Earth of ∼633.1 m s−1. A final sample of about 97 weak Fe lines with EW < 180 mÅ allows us to derive a mean global line shift of 638 ± 6 m s−1, which is in agreement with the theoretical solar GRS. Conclusions. These are the most accurate measurements of the solar GRS obtained thus far. Ultrastable spectrographs calibrated with the LFC over a larger spectral range, such as HARPS or ESPRESSO, together with a further improvement on the laboratory wavelengths, could provide a more robust measurement of the solar GRS and further testing of 3D hydrodynamical models.


1997 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 263-274

At the 1988 Baltimore General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, members of several Commissions dealing with planetary science expressed deep concern that no work was being undertaken to identify and avoid pollution problems in interplanetary space beyond the Moon. At that time NASA had convened a conference on problems in cislunar space due to the large and growing numbers of orbiting fragments hazardous to space vehicles. In translunar space this is hardly a problem. However an alarming number of future interplanetary mission proposals were considered for other reasons to be potentially harmful to various solar system bodies and interplanetary space itself.


2021 ◽  
Vol 217 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cesare Grava ◽  
Rosemary M. Killen ◽  
Mehdi Benna ◽  
Alexey A. Berezhnoy ◽  
Jasper S. Halekas ◽  
...  

AbstractVolatiles and refractories represent the two end-members in the volatility range of species in any surface-bounded exosphere. Volatiles include elements that do not interact strongly with the surface, such as neon (detected on the Moon) and helium (detected both on the Moon and at Mercury), but also argon, a noble gas (detected on the Moon) that surprisingly adsorbs at the cold lunar nighttime surface. Refractories include species such as calcium, magnesium, iron, and aluminum, all of which have very strong bonds with the lunar surface and thus need energetic processes to be ejected into the exosphere. Here we focus on the properties of species that have been detected in the exospheres of inner Solar System bodies, specifically the Moon and Mercury, and how they provide important information to understand source and loss processes of these exospheres, as well as their dependence on variations in external drivers.


Author(s):  
Ian A. Crawford ◽  
Katherine H. Joy ◽  
Jan H. Pasckert ◽  
Harald Hiesinger

The lunar surface has been exposed to the space environment for billions of years and during this time has accumulated records of a wide range of astrophysical phenomena. These include solar wind particles and the cosmogenic products of solar particle events which preserve a record of the past evolution of the Sun, and cosmogenic nuclides produced by high-energy galactic cosmic rays which potentially record the galactic environment of the Solar System through time. The lunar surface may also have accreted material from the local interstellar medium, including supernova ejecta and material from interstellar clouds encountered by the Solar System in the past. Owing to the Moon's relatively low level of geological activity, absence of an atmosphere, and, for much of its history, lack of a magnetic field, the lunar surface is ideally suited to collect these astronomical records. Moreover, the Moon exhibits geological processes able to bury and thus both preserve and ‘time-stamp' these records, although gaining access to them is likely to require a significant scientific infrastructure on the lunar surface. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Astronomy from the Moon: the next decades'.


1992 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 508-536
Author(s):  
B. Kolaczek

Solar System bodies are different. They have different sizes, from large planets to small asteroids, and shapes. They have different structure, from solid body to solid body with fluid atmosphere or core, to gaseous bodies, but all of them rotate. The Solar System is a big laboratory for studying rotation of solid and fluid bodies.Different observational methods are applied to determine the rotation of the Solar system bodies. They depend on the position of the observer and on the structure of the bodies. The most accurate methods, laser ranging to the Moon and artificial satellites and Very Long Base radio Interferometry have been applied to the determination of the rotation of the Earth and the Moon. Their accuracy is better than 0.001”, which on the surface of the Earth corresponds to about 3 cm. Radiotracking of artifical satellites have been used for Earth, Moon, Venus, Mars. In the case of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto-Charon magnetic and photometric observations have been used respectively. Their accuracy is of the order of one tenth of a degree.


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