Bibcode
de León, Julia; Licandro, Javier; Pinilla-Alonso, Noemí
Bibliographical reference
Handbook of Exoplanets, ISBN 978-3-319-55332-0. Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature, 2018, id.55
Advertised on:
2018
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
Small bodies are rocky and/or icy objects, usually ranging in size from
a few meters to a few hundreds of kilometers. They comprise near-Earth
and main belt asteroids, Jupiter Trojans, trans-Neptunian objects,
Centaurs, comets, and a recently discovered category called the
transitional objects. Their physical nature, distribution, formation,
and evolution are fundamental to understand how the solar system formed
and evolved and, ultimately, how planetary systems are formed in other
stars. The number of discoveries regarding exoplanets and debris disks
is continuously increasing, and therefore it is crucial to first
understand our own solar system's provenance and evolution in order to
better interpret what is going on in newly discovered planetary systems.
In this chapter we review the main physical and compositional properties
of the different populations of small bodies of the solar system.
Related projects
Minor Bodies of the Solar System
This project studies the physical and compositional properties of the so-called minor bodies of the Solar System, that includes asteroids, icy objects, and comets. Of special interest are the trans-neptunian objects (TNOs), including those considered the most distant objects detected so far (Extreme-TNOs or ETNOs); the comets and the comet-asteroid
Julia de
León Cruz