Physical Properties of Comets and Minor Planets
Commission 15 of the International Astronomical Union is dedicated to the Physical Study of Comets & Minor Planets.
Archival data on the physical properties of comets and minor planets are found in the PDS Asteroid/Dust Archive. This includes standard asteroid physical characteristics such as the properties of binary systems, occultation timings and diameters, masses, densities, rotation periods, surface temperatures, albedoes, spin vectors, taxonomy, and absolute magnitudes and slopes. In addition, European Asteroid Research Node (E.A.R.N.), an association of asteroid research groups, maintains a Data Base of Physical and Dynamical Properties of Near Earth Asteroids.
Most detailed information is available from Category: Asteroids visited by spacecraft and Category: Comets visited by spacecraft.
Read more about this topic: Minor Planet
Famous quotes containing the words physical, properties, comets, minor and/or planets:
“But alas! I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises, that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they choose and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society: to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“When beggars die there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child’s world and thus a world event.”
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962)
“Marriage is the clue to human life, but there is no marriage apart from the wheeling sun and the nodding earth, from the straying of the planets and the magnificence of the fixed stars.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)