Debris of asteroid disruptions close to the Sun

Abstract

The under-abundance of asteroids on orbits with small perihelion distances suggests that thermally-driven disruption may be an important process in the removal of rocky bodies in the Solar System. Here we report our study of how the debris streams arise from possible thermally-driven disruptions in the near-Sun region. We calculate that a small body with a diameter $\gtrsim 0.5$ km can produce a sufficient amount of material to allow the detection of the debris at the Earth as meteor showers, and that bodies at such sizes thermally disrupt every $\sim 2$ kyrs. We also find that objects from the inner parts of the asteroid belt are more likely to become Sun-approacher than those from the outer parts. We simulate the formation and evolution of the debris streams produced from a set of synthetic disrupting asteroids drawn from Granvik et al. (2016)'s near-Earth object population model, and find that they evolve 10--70 times faster than streams produced at ordinary solar distances. We compare the simulation results to a catalog of known meteor showers on Sun-approaching orbits. We show that there is a clear overabundance of Sun-approaching meteor showers, which is best explained by a combining effect of comet contamination and an extended disintegration phase that lasts up to a few kyrs. We suggest that a few asteroid-like Sun-approaching objects that brighten significantly at their perihelion passages could, in fact, be disrupting asteroids. An extended period of thermal disruption may also explain the widespread detection of transiting debris in exoplanetary systems. Data and codes that generate the figures and main results of this work are publicly available on 10.5281/zenodo.2547298 and https://github.com/Yeqzids/near-sun-disruptions.

arXiv commentApJ in press

References in corpus (22)

• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• Density of asteroids
• A disintegrating minor planet transiting a white dwarf
• Debiased orbit and absolute-magnitude distributions for near-Earth objects
• Evolution of OH and CO-dark Molecular Gas Fraction Across a Molecular Cloud Boundary In Taurus
• Drifting Asteroid Fragments Around WD 1145+017
• Potential Jupiter-Family Comet Contamination of the Main Asteroid Belt
• Resurrection of (3200) Phaethon in 2016
• IAU Meteor Data Center | the shower database: a status report
• Infrared Variability of Two Dusty White Dwarfs
• When Comets Get Old: A Synthesis of Comet and Meteor Observations of the Low Activity Comet 209P/LINEAR
• Dormant Comets Among the Near-Earth Object Population: A Meteor-Based Survey
• The Unexpected 2012 Draconid Meteor Storm
• Comet 322P/SOHO 1: An asteroid with the smallest perihelion distance?
• Identifying Near Earth Object Families
• Meteor showers from active asteroids and dormant comets in near-Earth space: a review
• Performance of D-criteria in isolating meteor showers from the sporadic background in an optical data set
• Increasing Geminid meteor shower activity
• Gone in a Blaze of Glory: the Demise of Comet C/2015 D1 (SOHO)
• Comet 252P/LINEAR: born (almost) dead?
• Meteor showers of comet C/1917 F1 Mellish

Cited by in corpus (8)

• A Twilight Search for Atiras, Vatiras and Co-orbital Asteroids: Preliminary Results
• Sodium Brightening of (3200) Phaethon Near Perihelion
• Supercatastrophic disruption of asteroids in the context of SOHO comet, fireball and meteor observations
• Continued PSP/WISPR Observations of a Phaethon-related Dust Trail
• A Deep and Wide Twilight Survey for Asteroids Interior to Earth and Venus
• Encounter of Parker Solar Probe and a Comet-like Object During Their Perihelia: Model Predictions and Measurements
• Minimum perihelion distances and associated dwell times for near-Earth asteroids
• Surface Properties of Near-Sun Asteroids