Dust Ejected From Asteroid P/2010 A2

Details Dust Ejected From Asteroid P/2010 A2 Dust Ejected From Asteroid P/2010 A2

Oct 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.5304a&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #53.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.1072

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We present measurements and dynamical models of the dust tail of the unusual inner-belt asteroid P/2010 A2. The observed tail consists of particles larger than 1mm moving under the combined action of solar gravity and radiation pressure. The particles originated from filaments near the nucleus that consist of cm- to m-sized boulders and that were themselves emitted from the nucleus upon its earlier disruption. We derive the dust size distribution from the surface brightness as a function of distance from the nucleus. For grains smaller than about 10mm, the differential size distribution can be described by a power-law with an exponent of -3.3 +/- 0.2. The displacement of the boulders perpendicular to the orbital plane is consistent with a vertical component of the relative velocity of less than 0.2 m/s. The time evolution of this distance confirms the emission date (early 2009) derived independently from measurements of the tail position angle.
This work is based on images made with the HST/WFC3.

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