Coarse material making up Bennu

Forums Asteroids Bennu from 690m above the surface Coarse material making up Bennu

#581247
Stewart John Bean
Participant

Having looked at the front page of the August journal , I am also struck by how coarse the material seems to be. Could the absence of fine dust be linked to the accumulation of charge on particles under the influence of the solar wind or deep UV? Electrostatic repulsion between individual particles and Bennu itself will be larger than the gravitational force for all but the larger particles assuming they both charge with the same polarity. So only big pieces can grow into something like Bennu.

In the outer solar system far from the solar wind charging will be much less significant and smaller particles can clump into a comet precursor. 

Stewart