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Ejected Surface Regolith as a Potential Source Material for Centaur Rings

  • Authors: Kaustub P. Anand, David A. Minton, Julie Brisset

Kaustub P. Anand et al 2026 The Planetary Science Journal 7 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 3.

The x vs. y progression of regolith ejection and capture in the equatorial plane around Chariklo (marked as central body (CB)). We show a landslide-like ejection from the long axis with the initial vejection = 0.2−0.5 vescape. We start with 500 regolith particles and end with 3657 regolith particles in this simulation. While a large number of regolith particles are captured, some fall back onto the Centaur or escape. We start to see stable orbits in one to three rotations and the regolith particles (visually) form an initial disk-like state in ∼15 rotations. Particles are color coded by collisional origin with their size scaled up for clarity. Note that there are no hit-and-run fragments generated in these simulations. Regardless, we have included that collisional category in the legend for completeness.

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