Active Asteroids: Main-Belt Comets and Disrupted Asteroids

TL;DR

This paper reviews the recent discoveries and classifications of active asteroids, including main-belt comets and disrupted asteroids, highlighting their significance in understanding small body activity in the solar system.

Contribution

It provides a concise overview of the key developments and classifications of active asteroids, emphasizing their different mechanisms of activity.

Findings

Main-belt comets are a new class of comets within the asteroid belt.

Disrupted asteroids exhibit activity due to physical disruptions, not sublimation.

The study highlights the importance of active asteroids in solar system research.

Abstract

The study of active asteroids has attracted a great deal of interest in recent years since the recognition of main-belt comets (which orbit in the main asteroid belt, but exhibit comet-like activity due to the sublimation of volatile ices) as a new class of comets in 2006, and the discovery of the first disrupted asteroids (which, unlike MBCs, exhibit comet-like activity due to a physical disruption such as an impact or rotational destabilization, not sublimation) in 2010. In this paper, I will briefly discuss key areas of interest in the study of active asteroids.