Pairs of asteroids sharing similar heliocentric orbits, but not bound together, were found recently. Backward integrations of their orbits indicated that they separated gently with low relative velocities, but did not provide additional insight into their formation mechanism. A previously hypothesized rotational fission process may explain their formation-critical predictions are that the mass ratios are less than about 0.2 and, as the mass ratio approaches this upper limit, the spin period of the larger body becomes long. Here we report photometric observations of a sample of asteroid pairs, revealing that the primaries of pairs with mass ratios much less than 0.2 rotate rapidly, near their critical fission frequency. As the mass ratio approaches 0.2, the primary period grows long. This occurs as the total energy of the system approaches zero, requiring the asteroid pair to extract an increasing fraction of energy from the primary's spin in order to escape. We do not find asteroid pairs with mass ratios larger than 0.2. Rotationally fissioned systems beyond this limit have insufficient energy to disrupt. We conclude that asteroid pairs are formed by the rotational fission of a parent asteroid into a proto-binary system, which subsequently disrupts under its own internal system dynamics soon after formation.

Anomalous Microwave Emission (AME) is a component of diffuse Galactic radiation observed at frequencies in the range ≈ 10-60 GHz. AME was first detected in 1996 and recognised as an additional component of emission in 1997. Since then, AME has been observed by a range of experiments and in a variety of environments. AME is spatially correlated with far-IR thermal dust emission but cannot be explained by synchrotron or free-free emission mechanisms, and is far in excess of the emission contributed by thermal dust emission with the power-law opacity consistent with the observed emission at sub-mm wavelengths. Polarization observations have shown that AME is very weakly polarized ( 1 %). The most natural explanation for AME is rotational emission from ultra-small dust grains ("spinning dust"), first postulated in 1957.

We present a Radio Recombination Line (RRL) survey of the Galactic Plane from the Hi Parkes All-sky Survey and associated Zone of Avoidance survey, which mapped the region l = 196 • -0 • -52 • and |b| 5 • at 1.4 GHz and 14.4 arcmin resolution. We combine three RRLs, H168α, H167α, and H166α to derive fully sampled maps of the diffuse ionized emission along the inner Galactic plane. The velocity information, at a resolution of 20 km s −1 , allows us to study the spatial distribution of the ionized gas and compare it with that of the molecular gas, as traced by CO. The longitudevelocity diagram shows that the RRL emission is mostly associated with CO gas from the molecular ring and is concentrated within the inner 30 • of longitude. A map of the free-free emission in this region of the Galaxy is derived from the line-integrated RRL emission, assuming an electron temperature gradient with Galactocentric radius of 496 ± 100 K kpc −1 . Based on the thermal continuum map we extracted a catalogue of 317 compact ( < ∼ 15 arcmin) sources, with flux densities, sizes and velocities. We report the first RRL observations of the southern ionized lobe in the Galactic centre. The line profiles and velocities suggest that this degree-scale structure is in rotation. We also present new evidence of diffuse ionized gas in the 3-kpc arm. Helium and carbon RRLs are detected in this survey. The He line is mostly observed towards Hii regions, whereas the C line is also detected further away from the source of ionization. These data represent the first observations of diffuse C RRLs in the Galactic plane at a frequency of 1.4 GHz.

Anomalous Microwave Emission (AME) is a significant component of Galactic diffuse emission in the frequency range 10-60 GHz and a new window into the properties of sub-nanometre-sized grains in the interstellar medium. We investigate the morphology of AME in the ≈10○ diameter λ Orionis ring by combining intensity data from the QUIJOTE experiment at 11, 13, 17 and 19 GHz, and the C-Band All Sky Survey (C-BASS) at 4.76 GHz, together with 19 ancillary datasets between 1.42 and 3000 GHz. Maps of physical parameters at 1○ resolution are produced through Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) fits of spectral energy distributions (SEDs), approximating the AME component with a log-normal distribution. AME is detected in excess of 20 σ at degree-scales around the entirety of the ring along photodissociation regions (PDRs), with three primary bright regions containing dark clouds. A radial decrease is observed in the AME peak frequency from ≈35 GHz, near the free-free region to ≈21 GHz, in the outer regions of the ring, which is the first detection of AME spectral variations across a single region. A strong correlation between AME peak frequency, emission measure and dust temperature is an indication for the dependence of the AME peak frequency on the local radiation field. The AME amplitude normalized by the optical depth is also strongly correlated with the radiation field, giving an overall picture consistent with spinning dust where the local radiation field plays a key role.

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