The three August “issues” of MNRAS (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society) are now online and complete: Volume 541, Issue 2, August 2025 Attree, N. Gutiérrez, P. Schuckart, C. et al. Constraints on the ejecting-crust activity model on comet… Read More »Note, Paper: Proclivity to Activity
Gotta keep up with Planetary Science Journal. In vol. 6 (2025): Bernstein, G. M. et al. Determinations of Asteroid Masses Using Mutual Encounters Observed in the Legacy Survey of Space and Time 162 ade3deJackson, S. L. et al. Thermal-IR Observations… Read More »Note, Paper: So Say PSJ
There’s a mid-month issue of Icarus, for 15 Sep (vol. 438): Jedicke, R. Alessi, E. M. Wiedner, N. et al. The steady state population of Earth’s minimoons of lunar provenance Art. 116587 .2025.116587Combi, M. R. Mäkinen, T. Bertaux, J.-L. et… Read More »Note, Paper: Mid-Icarus Edition
Referencing Taylor et al. 2024: Aug 7 Jonathan O’Callaghan The mysterious ‘dark comets’ prowling our Solar Systemwww.bbc.com/future/article/20250807-a-japanese-spacecraft-is-racing-toward-a-mysterious-dark-comet-to-discover-the-secrets-it-holds The BBC- usually pretty good on technical topics- has a nice writeup of our current state in “dark comets”- asteroids that show nongravitational… Read More »Dark “Comet”… Part Trois
A new instrument, CUBES (Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph) has just been approved for construction and eventual installation on ESO‘s VLT (Very Large Telescope). Why is this blog-able? One of the goals- an explicit goal- is to search for asteroid water:… Read More »VLT-CUBES Approved
The annual Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) meeting came and went, July 27-Aug 1, in Singapore. Forgot to post this, sorry: AOGS2025 SESSION PS19: HYDRATION IN AIRLESS BODIES OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM The recent decades have brought a revolution in our… Read More »2025 AOGS Meeting
In Icarus for 1 Sep (vol. 437): Pilorz, S. Jenniskens, P. Sun Close-Encounter model of Long-Period Comet and Meteoroid Orbit Stochastic Evolution Art. 116559 .2025.116559 Lu, M. Yi, W. Xue, X. et al. Comparison of meteor shower observed by two… Read More »Note, Paper: N-Rates Papers
Catching up with Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan (PASJ), not printing every month. In vol. 77 #4, some worthy papers: Miura, H. Yasuda, T. Thermal evolution model from cometary nuclei to asteroids considering contraction associated with ice sublimation… Read More »Note, Paper: Comet-Asteroid Matters
There’s already an August Cometary Science Newsletter, of general (not necessarily comet science) interest. It has one agenda item. Like the IRTF (NASA Infrared Telescope Facility), the NOIRLab Gemini telescopes are surveying their user base for 2025. Those Gemini astronomers… Read More »Cometary Science Newsletter, Aug
Wow, good Astronomy & Astrophysics for July (vol 699): Smirnov, E. A. Chaotic diffusion and transient resonance captures of the near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4 A26 202554489 Läuter, M. and Kramer, T. Rotation dynamics and torque efficiency of cometary nuclei A75 202553845… Read More »Note, Paper: A&A Eleven Ways