Physical Properties of Main-Belt Comet P/Garradd

Details Physical Properties of Main-Belt Comet P/Garradd Physical Properties of Main-Belt Comet P/Garradd

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.2003j&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #20.03

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Main-belt comets are objects in the asteroid belt which display the physical characteristics (coma, tail) of comets. We obtained detailed physical observations of newly discovered MBC P/2008 R1 (Garradd) starting only 2 days after its discovery. The Tisserand parameter is 3.216. Our observations reveal an object which is small (radius <0.7 km) and whose coma fades on timescales of weeks. The optical colors are consistent with C-type classification. Deep spectra show no evidence for gas emission lines and set a limit to the gas production near 1.5 kg per sec. The orbit appears unstable on timescales short compared to the age of the Solar system, suggesting that this object was formed elsewhere. We speculate that P/2008 R1 is an object that recently escaped from the outer belt in which ice sublimation has been triggered by the increased temperatures resulting from a declining perihelion distance.
This work is published in The Astronomical Journal, 137, 4313-4321:- http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.4315

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