Dim interstellar asteroids typically reach detectable brightness only when moving fast across the sky, while bright or cometary objects are detectable at slower speeds, implying surveys may miss a large fraction of the dim population.
Origin of the Structure of the Kuiper Belt during a Dynamical Instability in the Orbits of Uranus and Neptune
2 Pith papers cite this work, alongside 477 external citations. Polarity classification is still indexing.
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477
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abstract
We explore the origin and orbital evolution of the Kuiper belt in the framework of a recent model of the dynamical evolution of the giant planets, sometimes known as the Nice model. This model is characterized by a short, but violent, instability phase, during which the planets were on large eccentricity orbits. One characteristic of this model is that the proto-planetary disk must have been truncated at roughly 30 to 35 AU so that Neptune would stop migrating at its currently observed location. As a result, the Kuiper belt would have initially been empty. In this paper we present a new dynamical mechanism which can deliver objects from the region interior to ~35 AU to the Kuiper belt without excessive inclination excitation. Assuming that the last encounter with Uranus delivered Neptune onto a low-inclination orbit with a semi-major axis of ~27 AU and an eccentricity of ~0.3, and that subsequently Neptune's eccentricity damped in ~1 My, our simulations reproduce the main observed properties of the Kuiper belt at an unprecedented level.
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astro-ph.EP 2years
2026 2representative citing papers
Reports asymmetric heliocentric activity slopes for 103P/Hartley 2 and exponential outburst decay plus flattening phase curves for Chiron from ATLAS, ZTF, and LCO photometry.
citing papers explorer
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Sky-Plane Velocity Distributions of Interstellar Objects and Implications for Their Detection
Dim interstellar asteroids typically reach detectable brightness only when moving fast across the sky, while bright or cometary objects are detectable at slower speeds, implying surveys may miss a large fraction of the dim population.
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Multi-year Ground-Based Survey Photometry of Active Comet 103P/Hartley 2 and Centaur (2060) Chiron: A Tale of Two Comets in the Pre-LSST Era
Reports asymmetric heliocentric activity slopes for 103P/Hartley 2 and exponential outburst decay plus flattening phase curves for Chiron from ATLAS, ZTF, and LCO photometry.