Active Asteroids: Main-Belt Comets and Disrupted Asteroids

Henry H. Hsieh
(Submitted on 5 Nov 2015)

The study of active asteroids has attracted a great deal of interest in recent years since the recognition of main-belt comets (which orbit in the main asteroid belt, but exhibit comet-like activity due to the sublimation of volatile ices) as a new class of comets in 2006, and the discovery of the first disrupted asteroids (which, unlike MBCs, exhibit comet-like activity due to a physical disruption such as an impact or rotational destabilization, not sublimation) in 2010. In this paper, I will briefly discuss key areas of interest in the study of active asteroids.

Comments: 4 pages; to appear in Proceedings of IAU Focus Meeting 9 of the XXIX General Assembly
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:1511.01917 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1511.01917v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Henry Hsieh
[v1] Thu, 5 Nov 2015 21:14:04 GMT (21kb)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.01917