Dr. Rabus, Markus

The impact of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft into Dimorphos, moon of the asteroid Didymos, changed Dimorphos’s orbit substantially, largely from the ejection of material. We present results from 12 Earth-based facilities involved in a world-wide campaign to monitor the brightness and morphology of the ejecta in the first 35 days after impact. After an initial brightening of ∼1.4 mag, we find consistent dimming rates of 0.11–0.12 mag day−1 in the first week, and 0.08–0.09 mag day−1 over the entire study period. The system returned to its pre-impact brightness 24.3–25.3 days after impact though the primary ejecta tail remained. The dimming paused briefly eight days after impact, near in time to the appearance of the second tail. This was likely due to a secondary release of material after re-impact of a boulder released in the initial impact, though movement of the primary ejecta through the aperture likely played a role.

The NASA’s Double-Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was a unique planetary defence and technology test mission, the first of its kind. The main spacecraft of the DART mission impacted the target asteroid Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting the asteroid Didymos (65803), on 2022 September 26. The impact brought up a mass of ejecta which, together with the direct momentum transfer from the collision, caused an orbital period change of 33 ± 1 minutes, as measured by ground-based observations. We report here the outcome of the optical monitoring campaign of the Didymos system from the Danish 1.54 m telescope at La Silla around the time of impact. The observations contributed to the determination of the changes in the orbital parameters of the Didymos–Dimorphos system, as reported by Thomas et al., but in this paper we focus on the ejecta produced by the DART impact. We present photometric measurements from which we remove the contribution from the Didymos–Dimorphos system using an H–G photometric model. Using two photometric apertures we determine the fading rate of the ejecta to be 0.115 ± 0.003 mag day−1 (in a 2″ aperture) and 0.086 ± 0.003 mag day−1 (5″) over the first week postimpact. After about 8 days postimpact we note the fading slows down to 0.057 ± 0.003 mag day−1 (2″ aperture) and 0.068 ± 0.002 mag day−1 (5″). We include deep-stacked images of the system to illustrate the ejecta evolution during the first 18 days, noting the emergence of dust tails formed from ejecta pushed in the antisolar direction, and measuring the extent of the particles ejected Sunward to be at least 4000 km.

Aims. We investigated the nature of the anomalies appearing in four microlensing events KMT-2020-BLG-0757, KMT-2022-BLG-0732, KMT-2022-BLG-1787, and KMT-2022-BLG-1852. The light curves of these events commonly exhibit initial bumps followed by subsequent troughs that extend across a substantial portion of the light curves. Methods. We performed thorough modeling of the anomalies to elucidate their characteristics. Despite their prolonged durations, which differ from the usual brief anomalies observed in typical planetary events, our analysis revealed that each anomaly in these events originated from a planetary companion located within the Einstein ring of the primary star. It was found that the initial bump arouse when the source star crossed one of the planetary caustics, while the subsequent trough feature occurred as the source traversed the region of minor image perturbations lying between the pair of planetary caustics. Results. The estimated masses of the host and planet, their mass ratios, and the distance to the discovered planetary systems are (Mhost/M⊙, Mplanet/MJ, q/10−3, DL/kpc) = (0.58−0.30+0.33, 10.71−5.61+6.17, 17.61 ± 2.25, 6.67−1.30+0.93) for KMT-2020-BLG-0757, (0.53−0.31+0.31, 1.12−0.65+0.65, 2.01 ± 0.07, 6.66−1.84+1.19) for KMT-2022-BLG-0732, (0.42−0.23+0.32, 6.64−3.64+4.98, 15.07 ± 0.86, 7.55−1.30+0.89) for KMT-2022-BLG-1787, and (0.32−0.19+0.34, 4.98−2.94+5.42, 8.74 ± 0.49, 6.27−1.15+0.90) for KMT-2022-BLG-1852. These parameters indicate that all the planets are giants with masses exceeding the mass of Jupiter in our solar system and the hosts are low-mass stars with masses substantially less massive than the Sun.

Between 2010 and 2017, we have collected new optical and radar observations of the potentially hazardous asteroid (2102) Tantalus from the ESO NTT and Danish telescopes at the La Silla Observatory, and from the Arecibo planetary radar. The object appears to be nearly spherical, showing a low-amplitude light-curve variation and limited large-scale features in the radar images. The spin-state is difficult to constrain with the available data; including a certain light-curve subset significantly changes the spin-state estimates, and the uncertainties on period determination are significant. Constraining any change in rotation rate was not possible, despite decades of observations. The conv e x light curv e-inv ersion model, with rotational pole at λ = 210 ◦ ± 41 ◦ and β = −30 ◦ ± 35 ◦, is more flattened than the two models reconstructed by including radar observations: with prograde ( λ = 36 ◦ ± 23 ◦, β = 30 ◦ ± 15 ◦), and with retrograde rotation mode ( λ = 180 ◦ ± 24 ◦, β = −30 ± 16 ◦). Using data from WISE , we were able to determine that the prograde model produces the best agreement in size determination between radar and thermophysical modelling. Radar measurements indicate possible variation in surface properties, suggesting one side might have lower radar albedo and be rougher at the centimetre-to-decimetre scale than the other. However, further observations are needed to confirm this. Thermophysical analysis indicates a surface co v ered in fine-grained regolith, consistent with radar albedo, and polarisation ratio measurements. Finally, geophysical investigation of the spin-stability of Tantalus shows that it could be exceeding its critical spin-rate via cohesive forces.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft successfully performed the first test of a kinetic impactor for asteroid deflection by impacting Dimorphos, the secondary of near-Earth binary asteroid (65803) Didymos, and changing the orbital period of Dimorphos. A change in orbital period of approximately 7 min was expected if the incident momentum from the DART spacecraft was directly transferred to the asteroid target in a perfectly inelastic collision1, but studies of the probable impact conditions and asteroid properties indicated that a considerable momentum enhancement (β) was possible2,3. In the years before impact, we used lightcurve observations to accurately determine the pre-impact orbit parameters of Dimorphos with respect to Didymos4–6. Here we report the change in the orbital period of Dimorphos as a result of the DART kinetic impact to be −33.0 ± 1.0 (3σ) min. Using new Earth-based lightcurve and radar observations, two independent approaches determined identical values for the change in the orbital period. This large orbit period change suggests that ejecta contributed a substantial amount of momentum to the asteroid beyond what the DART spacecraft carried.