Other
Scientific paper
Oct 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.0502h&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #5.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.950
Other
Scientific paper
Discovered in 2005 as part of the Hawaii Trails Project survey, Comet 176P/LINEAR is the third-known main-belt comet (MBC). MBCs are a newly-discovered class of small solar system bodies that are dynamically indistinguishable from main-belt asteroids (and are likely native to the main belt), yet exhibit cometary mass loss driven by the sublimation of volatile ice. The present-day existence of ice in main-belt objects is surprising given their close proximity to the Sun, and presents intriguing opportunities for, among other things, constraining the temperature and compositional structure of our protoplanetary disk, better understanding the preservation of volatile material in asteroids, and characterizing a likely significant primordial source of Earth's water. Here, we present results from an analysis of rotational lightcurve data for 176P from its active phase in 2005 and an inactive period in 2007. Data from 2007 indicate that 176P has a likely rotation period of P = 22.23+/-0.01 hr, with a peak-to-trough photometric range of 0.7 mag, indicating significant elongation (a/b > 1.9). Data from 2005 are less well-sampled than those from 2007, and also suffer from non-negligible coma contamination. Nonetheless, we find that data from 2005 are consistent with the slow rotation period found from 2007 data, though we also find evidence for a significantly smaller photometric range than in 2007. We will discuss the implications of these results with regard to 176P's likely physical nature.
Hsieh Henry H.
Lacerda Pedro
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