Preface; Acknowledgments; List of symbols and abbreviations; 1. Light and magnitude; 2. Orbits and discovering minor planets; 3. Meteorites, minerals, and isotopes; 4. Reflectance spectroscopy and asteroid taxonomy; 5. Physical properties and families; 6. Comets and outer Solar System bodies; 7. Near-Earth asteroids and the impact threat; 8. Spacecraft missions; References; Index.
An overview of asteroid science, summarising the astronomical and geological characteristics of asteroids, for students and researchers.
Thomas H. Burbine is Director of the Williston Observatory at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, and holds a PhD in Planetary Sciences from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a collaborator on the OSIRIS-Rex sample return mission, and asteroid (5159) Burbine is named in his honour.
'Asteroids: Astronomical and Geological Bodies was written to
coincide with the surge of interest in these relatively small
bodies. Missions such as NASA's Dawn satellite to Vesta and Ceres
have increased this interest … [the author] intends for this book
to introduce students to asteroids, meteors, and comets at a level
that would allow them to move on to understanding articles in the
planetary science literature. For a work of this breadth, the
length is such that some topics are only briefly presented, but
with detailed references for students to follow up for further
study. Although the book does provide significant detail on the
families of asteroids in the main belt, it also discusses comets,
Trojan asteroids, centaurs, and Kuiper Belt objects. Some science
results from the New Horizons mission to Pluto are presented…
Undergraduates with an interest in planetary science will find this
to be a very helpful reference book.' C. Palma, CHOICE
'This excellent text-book is engagingly written, clear, readable,
comprehensive, and just the right length and level for a masters'
course … If you know little about asteroids and want to learn, I
can recommend no better way to start than with this extremely
impressive book.' David W. Hughes, The Observatory: A Review of
Astronomy
'… an excellent reference for readers interested in space rocks
either out of professional or personal curiosity. It prepares the
readers with the basics such that results obtained from space
missions like Dawn, the first to visit a dwarf planet (Ceres); Near
Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Shoemaker, the first to land on an
asteroid (Eros); Hayabusa, the first to return samples of an
asteroid (Itokawa); Galileo and others can be interpreted and
understood. … It is not all academic but conveys general knowledge
as well. For instance, do the readers know that the iron used to
make the dagger found in the tomb of Tutankhamun is meteoritic?' B.
Ishak, Contemporary Physics
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