Context. Asteroid (130) Elektra belongs to one of the six known triple asteroids in the main belt, so its mass has been reliably determined. Aims. We aim to use all available disk-resolved images of (130) Elektra obtained by the SPHERE instrument at VLT and by the Nirc2 of the Keck telescope together with the disk-integrated photometry to determine its shape model and its size. The volume can b...

Approximately 470 million years ago one of the largest cosmic catastrophes occurred in our solar system since the accretion of the planets. A 200-km large asteroid was disrupted by a collision in the Main Asteroid Belt, which spawned fragments into Earth crossing orbits. This had tremendous consequences for the meteorite production and cratering rate during several millions of years following t...

Integration of the orbit of asteroid (29075) 1950 DA, which is based on radar and optical measurements spanning 51 years, reveals a 20-minute interval in March 2880 when there could be a nonnegligible probability of the 1-kilometer object colliding with Earth. Trajectory knowledge remains accurate until then because of extensive astrometric data, an inclined orbit geometry that reduces in-plane...

Eight years ago, some scientists computed for a 1.1-km diameter asteroid (1950 DA) a 0.0 to 0.3 per cent probability for colliding with Earth. Not long after this, a quasi-analytic model for wave propagation was used to describe the dynamics of the tsunami generated by the asteroid impact somewhere at 600 km east of the U.S. coast. Starting from the same initial conditions, our paper resumes th...

We present low resolution reflectance spectra over the wavelength range 5000– 10000Å for 4 asteroids (3 belonging to the Nysa family and one near–Earth asteroid) obtained at the San Pedro Martir Observatory (Mexico) using the 2.1m telescope. Though the limited wavelength range covered often makes a classification difficult, the analysis of the available data reveals that two asteroids of the Ny...

We have numerically investigated a three-body problem consisting of the Sun, an asteroid, and an infinitesimal particle initially placed about the asteroid. We assume that the asteroid has the following properties: a circular heliocentric orbit at R -2.55 AU, an asteroid/Sun mass ratio of/~ -5 x 10-12, and a spherical shape with radius R A -100 km; these values are close to those of the minor p...

Introduction: Laboratory measurements of meteorite reflectance spectra rarely match telescopic observations of asteroid reflectance spectra due to the process (es) of space weathering, which rapidly darken and redden asteroid surface on million-year timescales [e.g. 1-2]. While most main belt asteroids appear weathered, a fraction of near-Earth asteroids (the Q-types) appear unweathered – possi...