Printable Version of Topic

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 23 2006, 08:28 PM

Published online today in Science Express Reports:

A Population of Comets in the Main Asteroid Belt
Henry H. Hsieh and David Jewitt
Published online March 23, 2006; 10.1126/science.1125150 (Science Express Reports)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1125150v1

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 23 2006, 09:43 PM

You beat me to it, you ratfink! I was about to mention that this was one of the few interesting abstracts from the upcoming COSPAR meeting: http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/COSPAR2006/02767/COSPAR2006-A-02767.pdf .

For some reason, though, most of the other interesting COSPAR abstracts this time concerned small bodies. More on that shortly.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 23 2006, 09:58 PM

I can hardly wait, though I'm sure you're not offended that I went ahead and read the abstracts before your "summary."

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 23 2006, 10:22 PM

Don't sneer at me. I suffer through all these things that you may be saved from having to plow through all of them yourselves.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 23 2006, 10:26 PM

It's debatable, at least to me, whether the true "suffer[ing]" comes from reading the abstracts themselves or enduring your summary/commentary telling me what I just read.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 23 2006, 10:43 PM

Yeah, well, you hadn't read those LPSC 2006 abstracts I dug up recently, so there. (Besides, I wasn't just sending this out to YOU.)

In any case, see if your list of greatest small-body COSPAR hits matches mine. Besides the Jewitt abstract on comets in the Main Asteroid Belt, and the note from the Dawn team on their proposed followup mission "EVE", we have:

http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/COSPAR2006/01078/COSPAR2006-A-01078.pdf : Best map yet of Ceres, from Hubble -- showing 11 surface features, although "The albedo variations on the surface of Ceres is only 6%, and color variations are only 4%, indicating one of the most uniform surfaces of small bodies in the solar system."

http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/COSPAR2006/01776/COSPAR2006-A-01776-2.pdf : Analysis suggests that -- even if a comet's surface is as weak as the minimum estimates from Deep Impact (tensile strength of 65 Pascals) -- "Modelling the touchdown of Philae (the Rosetta Lander) results in a maximum depth of the order of [only] 20 cm."

http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/COSPAR2006/02883/COSPAR2006-A-02883.pdf : A claim that experiments on the artificial space weathering of an HED meteorite indicate that Vesta's surface is sufficiently unweathered that "This strongly suggests the presence of a [Vestan] magnetic field shielding the surface from solar wind ions."

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 24 2006, 12:27 AM

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/%7Ehsieh/mbc-release.html
University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (UH-IfA)
March 23, 2006

Note the link to the version of the paper published online today in Science Express Reports.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 24 2006, 08:58 AM

And a summary at:

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Main_Belt_Comets_May_Have_Been_Source_Of_Earths_Water.html

Bob Shaw