Most stars become white dwarfs after they have exhausted their nuclear fuel (the Sun will be one such). Between one-quarter and one-half of white dwarfs have elements heavier than helium in their atmospheres, even though these elements ought to sink rapidly into the stellar interiors (unless they are occasionally replenished). The abundance ratios of heavy elements in the atmospheres of white dwarfs are similar to the ratios in rocky bodies in the Solar System. This fact, together with the existence of warm, dusty debris disks surrounding about four per cent of white dwarfs, suggests that rocky debris from the planetary systems of white-dwarf progenitors occasionally pollutes the atmospheres of the stars. The total accreted mass of this debris is sometimes comparable to the mass of large asteroids in the Solar System. However, rocky, disintegrating bodies around a white dwarf have not yet been observed. Here we report observations of a white dwarf—WD 1145+017—being transited by at least one, and probably several, disintegrating planetesimals, with periods ranging from 4.5 hours to 4.9 hours. The strongest transit signals occur every 4.5 hours and exhibit varying depths (blocking up to 40 per cent of the star’s brightness) and asymmetric profiles, indicative of a small object with a cometary tail of dusty effluent material. The star has a dusty debris disk, and the star’s spectrum shows prominent lines from heavy elements such as magnesium, aluminium, silicon, calcium, iron, and nickel. This system provides further evidence that the pollution of white dwarfs by heavy elements might originate from disrupted rocky bodies such as asteroids and minor planets.

A Disintegrating Minor Planet Transiting a White Dwarf

We review the current knowledge and understanding of dust in the inner solar system. The major sources of the dust population in the inner solar system are comets and asteroids, but the relative contributions of these sources are not quantified. The production processes inward from 1 AU are: Poynting-Robertson deceleration of particles outside of 1 AU, fragmentation into dust due to particle-particle collisions, and direct dust production from comets. The loss processes are: dust collisional fragmentation, sublimation, radiation pressure acceleration, sputtering, and rotational bursting. These loss processes as well as dust surface processes release dust compounds in the ambient interplanetary medium. Between 1 and 0.1 AU the dust number densities and fluxes can be described by inward extrapolation of 1 AU measurements, assuming radial dependences that describe particles in close to circular orbits. Observations have confirmed the general accuracy of these assumptions for regions within 30° latitude of the ecliptic plane. The dust densities are considerably lower above the solar poles but Lorentz forces can lift particles of sizes < 5 μm to high latitudes and produce a random distribution of small grains that varies with the solar magnetic field. Also long-period comets are a source of out-of-ecliptic particles. Under present conditions no prominent dust ring exists near the Sun. We discuss the recent observations of sungrazing comets. Future in-situ experiments should measure the complex dynamics of small dust particles, identify the contribution of cometary dust to the inner-solar-system dust cloud, and determine dust interactions in the ambient interplanetary medium. The combination of in-situ dust measurements with particle and field measurements is recommended.

https://www.uni-muenster.de/imperia/md/content/planetologie/pdf/imannpersonalpage/mann_et_al04a.pdf

Dust Near The Sun

The field of asteroid thermophysical modeling has experienced an extraordinary growth in the last ten years, as new thermal infrared data became available for hundreds of thousands of asteroids. The infrared emission of asteroids depends on the body’s size, shape, albedo, thermal inertia, roughness and rotational properties. These parameters can therefore be derived by thermophysical modeling of infrared data. Thermophysical modeling led to asteroid size estimates that were confirmed at the few-percent level by later spacecraft visits. We discuss how instrumentation advances now allow mid-infrared interferometric observations as well as high-accuracy spectro-photometry, posing their own set of thermal-modeling challenges. We present major breakthroughs achieved in studies of the thermal inertia, a sensitive indicator for the nature of asteroids soils, allowing us, for instance, to determine the grain size of asteroidal regoliths. Thermal inertia also governs non-gravitational effects on asteroid orbits, requiring thermophysical modeling for precise asteroid dynamical studies. The radiative heating of asteroids, meteoroids, and comets from the Sun also governs the thermal stress in surface material; only recently has it been recognized as a significant weathering process. Asteroid space missions with thermal infrared instruments are currently undergoing study at all major space agencies. This will require a high level of sophistication of thermophysical models in order to analyse high-quality spacecraft data.

/pdf/asteroid-thermophysical-modeling-2gtd8re47b.pdf

Asteroid thermophysical modeling

Thermomechanical processes such as fatigue and shock have been suggested to cause and contribute to rock breakdown on Earth, and on other planetary bodies, particularly airless bodies in the inner solar system. In this study, we modeled grain-scale stresses induced by diurnal temperature variations on simple microstructures made of pyroxene and plagioclase on various solar system bodies. We found that a heterogeneous microstructure on the Moon experiences peak tensile stresses on the order of 100 MPa. The stresses induced are controlled by the coefficient of thermal expansion and Young's modulus of the mineral constituents, and the average stress within the microstructure is determined by relative volume of each mineral. Amplification of stresses occurs at surface-parallel boundaries between adjacent mineral grains and at the tips of pore spaces. We also found that microscopic spatial and temporal surface temperature gradients do not correlate with high stresses, making them inappropriate proxies for investigating microcrack propagation. Although these results provide very strong evidence for the significance of thermomechanical processes on airless bodies, more work is needed to quantify crack propagation and rock breakdown rates.

/pdf/grain-scale-thermoelastic-stresses-and-spatiotemporal-owgm5l5ws7.pdf

Grain-scale thermoelastic stresses and spatiotemporal temperature gradients on airless bodies, implications for rock breakdown

Outer solar coronal IR radiance measured by ground telescope and stratosphere balloon flight, noting interplanetary dust thermal emission

Infrared Observations of the Outer Solar Corona.

Cometary splitting due to thermal stresses

We consider the thermal evolution of both icy and non-icy solids moving in highly eccentric orbits using an analytical solution of the heat diffusion equation. The thermal stresses which arise inside and at the surface of solids can exceed by several orders of magnitude the tidal stresses in the neighbourhood of the Sun for all material considered. This means that thermal disintegration is the most important factor in the evolution of cometary and meteorite-like bodies. This problem may be directly connected with the origin of the variable part of the infrared radiation excess in the F-corona observed at 4Ro and 9Ro from the Sun. The possible scenario of the disintegration of the distant solids due to the thermal stresses is also given.

The Thermal Destruction of Solids Near the Sun

The orbital motion of interplanetary dust grains in sublimation zone near the Sun is revised in detail for grains of obsidian, basalt, astronomical silicate and graphite. Effects of gravity, radiation pressure for a spherical source with limb darkening, and solar wind pressure on dust grains were taken into account. The influence of sputtering, thermal velocity and tangential velocity component of the solar wind particles on lifetime of the grains moving on prograde and retrograde orbits is investigated. It is obtained that β = radiation pressure/gravity is constant everywhere including the region close to the Sun. It is shown that the temperature of submicron dust grains does not exceed 1500 K for silicate grains and 2000 K for graphite ones anywhere in solar corona. Both the dust rings observed near 9r[odot] and the dust free zone near 6.5r[odot] can be explained by basalt-like grains. These dust rings and those observed earlier near 4r[odot], formed by obsidian-like grains, were not found duri...

Dynamics of dust grains near the Sun

On the orbital evolution of dust grains in the sublimation region around WD1145+017

We have performed the calculations of the orbital evolution of dust particles from volcanic glass (p-obsidian), basalt, astrosilicate, olivine, and pyroxene in the sublimation zone near the Sun. The sublimation (evaporation) rate is determined by the temperature of dust particles depending on their radius, material, and distance to the Sun. All practically important parameters that characterize the interaction of spherical dust particles with the radiation are calculated using the Mie theory. The influence of radiation and solar wind pressure, as well as the Poynting–Robertson drag force effects on the dust dynamics, are also taken into account. According to the observations (Shestakova and Demchenko, 2016), the boundary of the dust-free zone is 7.0–7.6 solar radii for standard particles of the zodiacal cloud and 9.1–9.2 solar radii for cometary particles. The closest agreement is obtained for basalt particles and certain kinds of olivine, pyroxene, and volcanic glass.

L. I. Shestakova

Papers

Cometary splitting due to thermal stresses

The Thermal Destruction of Solids Near the Sun

Dynamics of dust grains near the Sun

On the orbital evolution of dust grains in the sublimation region around WD1145+017

Orbital Evolution of Dust Particles in the Sublimation Zone near the Sun