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The Diverse Population of Small Bodies of the Solar System

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Handbook of Exoplanets

Abstract

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.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain

    Julia de León & Javier Licandro

  2. Florida Space Institute, UCF, Orlando, FL, USA

    Noemí Pinilla-Alonso

Authors
  1. Julia de León
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  2. Javier Licandro
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  3. Noemí Pinilla-Alonso
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Julia de León .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain

    Hans J. Deeg

  2. Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain

    Juan Antonio Belmonte

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de León, J., Licandro, J., Pinilla-Alonso, N. (2018). The Diverse Population of Small Bodies of the Solar System. In: Deeg, H., Belmonte, J. (eds) Handbook of Exoplanets . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55333-7_55

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