Don Quixote has been considered asteroidal since its discovery in 1983, despite its comet-like orbit. We found activity in this object during its 2009 and 2018 apparitions, leading us to believe that it really is an active comet. But are there other objects like Don Quixote? I monitored a sample of ~100 asteroids that are somewhat likely to turn active, too, over a period of more than 4 years. Bottom line: Don Quixote is rather unique.

TESS is a satellite that observes bright stars to find brightness modulations revealing exoplanet transits - but it also observes a lot of asteroids over a long period of time, which makes it a unique asset for deriving long asteroid rotation periods.

The Gaia mission builds a unique survey of the stars in our Milky Way - but it also observes asteroids that are crossing its field of view. We derive ensemble shape information for different asteroid populations from the first batch of asteroid data from Gaia.