NIAAS March 2026 Lecture – Dr. Meg Schwamb (QUB) – The View of the Centaur Region Through Wide-Field Surveys

For our March lecture we are really pleased to have Dr. Meg Schwamb from Queens University, back with us for the second time. Meg will be giving us a talk titled ‘The View of the Centaur Region Through Wide-Field Surveys‘.

This lecture will be held on Monday 2nd March 2026 at our usual venue of Ballyclare High School Lecture Theatre, starting at 8pmsharp.

About the talk: The small icy bodies in the Trans-Neptunian region originated in the construction zones that formed our planets. As the fossils left over from the era of planet formation, Trans-Neptunian objects (TNOS) inform our knowledge about the growth of planetary embryos and the dynamical evolution of our Solar System. 

Centaurs are a transitory population of icy planetesimals on relatively short-lived chaotic orbits between Neptune and Jupiter that cross one or more of the giant planets. They have recently entered the middle Solar System, diffusing inward from the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune. Centaurs are gravitationally perturbed/scattered by the giant planets like a pinball hitting the bumpers in an arcade machine. 

Most Centaurs will be “bouncing” around for ∼10 Myrs before being ejected into interstellar space. Dynamical studies reveal that a small fraction of Centaur orbits (~30%) survive their turn in the Solar System’s pinball game, becoming Jupiter-family comets (JFCs) on Jupiter-crossing orbits. JFCs (like 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko visited by ESA’s Rosetta mission) are on short period orbits dominated by gravitational interactions with Jupiter. JFCs are heated to temperatures high enough to sublimate water ice that powers the production of dust/gas comae and dust/ion tails. 

Despite being a key stage in the metamorphosis of an escaped Kuiper belt object (KBO) into a JFC, we know little about what happens during the Centaur phase. The Centaurs have not been studied in the same detail as their progenitors and progeny because of their relatively small numbers, small sizes, and the fact they are spread out across ~25 au.

In this talk, I will present recent analysis of serendipitous detections of TNOs in the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) surveys with a focus on what these results reveal about Centaur surfaces and cometary activity. I will also highlight how the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory and the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will provide our best view yet of the mysterious Centaurs.

About Dr. Meg Schwamb: Meg Schwamb is a Reader in the Astrophysics Research Centre (ARC) and the School of Mathematics and Physics at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) in the UK. Meg’s research focuses on how planets and their building blocks form and evolve, by applying ground-based surveys to probe our Solar System’s small body reservoirs. She also serves as co-chair of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time Solar System Science Collaboration.

It’s fantastic to have Meg back with us again, last time was in October 2022. She is a great speaker and this is a lecture not to be missed!

Looking forward to seeing you all there and remember refreshments and good chat are available after the lecture.