Asteroids & Comets

Monoliths vs. rubble piles. Orbital families. Collisional disruption. Origin of near-Earth objects. Sublimation of comets. Meteor showers.

Please read the following in Carroll & Ostlie.

22.1	Pluto and Charon
	The Discovery of Charon — The Densities and Compositions of Pluto and Charon — The Possible Formation of Charon by a Large Impact — Complete Spin-Orbit Coupling — A Frozen Surface and a Changing Atmosphere — A Rendezvous with Pluto

22.2	Comets and Kuiper Belt Objects
	A Model of a Comet — The Dynamics of Comet Tails — The Composition of Comets — Disconnection Events — Robotic Investigation of Comets — Sun-Grazing Comets — The Oort Cloud — The Kuiper Belt — A Kuiper Belt Object Larger Than Pluto — Classes of Kuiper Belt Objects — Centuars — The Implications for Water in the Inner Solar System

22.3	Asteroids
	The Kirkwood Gaps in the Asteroid Belt — The Trojan Asteroids — The Amors, Apollos, and Atens — Hirayama Famalies — Rendezvousing with Asteroids — Classes of Asteroids — Internal Heating

22.4	Meteorites
	The Age and Composition of the Allende Meteorite — CAIs and Chrondrules — Carbonaceous and Ordinary Chrondrites — Chemically Differentiated Meteorites — Sources of Meteorites — A History of Collisions with Earth — The Basic Building Blocks of Life

Problem Set #7: Due 25 October 2012.

Joshua E. Barnes (barnes at ifa.hawaii.edu)

Updated: 18 October 2012
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~barnes/ast241_f12/ac.html