The Diverse Population of Small Bodies of the Solar System

de León, Julia; Licandro, Javier; Pinilla-Alonso, Noemí
Bibliographical reference

Handbook of Exoplanets, ISBN 978-3-319-55332-0. Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature, 2018, id.55

Advertised on:
2018
Number of authors
3
IAC number of authors
2
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
Small bodies are rocky and/or icy objects, usually ranging in size from a few meters to a few hundreds of kilometers. They comprise near-Earth and main belt asteroids, Jupiter Trojans, trans-Neptunian objects, Centaurs, comets, and a recently discovered category called the transitional objects. Their physical nature, distribution, formation, and evolution are fundamental to understand how the solar system formed and evolved and, ultimately, how planetary systems are formed in other stars. The number of discoveries regarding exoplanets and debris disks is continuously increasing, and therefore it is crucial to first understand our own solar system's provenance and evolution in order to better interpret what is going on in newly discovered planetary systems. In this chapter we review the main physical and compositional properties of the different populations of small bodies of the solar system.
Related projects
Project Image
Minor Bodies of the Solar System
This project studies the physical and compositional properties of the so-called minor bodies of the Solar System, that includes asteroids, icy objects, and comets. Of special interest are the trans-neptunian objects (TNOs), including those considered the most distant objects detected so far (Extreme-TNOs or ETNOs); the comets and the comet-asteroid
Julia de
León Cruz