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28 March 2024
 
  » arxiv » 1109.6350

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Observational and Dynamical Characterization of Main-Belt Comet P/2010 R2 (La Sagra)
Henry H. Hsieh ; Bin Yang ; Nader Haghighipour ; Bojan Novakovic ; Robert Jedicke ; Richard J. Wainscoat ; Larry Denneau ; Shinsuke Abe ; Wen-Ping Chen ; Alan Fitzsimmons ; Mikael Granvik ; Tommy Grav ; Wing Ip ; Heather M. Kaluna ; Daisuke Kinoshita ; Jan Kleyna ; Matthew M. Knight ; Pedro Lacerda ; Carey M. Lisse ; Eric Maclennan ; Karen J. Meech ; Marco Micheli ; Andrea Milani ; Jana Pittichova ; Eva Schunova ; David J. Tholen ; Lawrence H. Wasserman ; William S. Burgett ; K. C. Chambers ; Jim N. Heasley ; N. Kaiser ; Eugene A. Magnier ; Jeffrey S. Morgan ; Paul A. Price ; Uffe G. Jorgensen ; Martin Dominik ; Tobias Hinse ; Kailash Sahu ; Colin Snodgrass ;
Date 28 Sep 2011
AbstractWe present observations of the recently discovered comet-like main-belt object P/2010 R2 (La Sagra) obtained by Pan-STARRS 1 and the Faulkes Telescope-North on Haleakala in Hawaii, the University of Hawaii 2.2 m, Gemini-North, and Keck I telescopes on Mauna Kea, the Danish 1.54 m telescope (operated by the MINDSTEp consortium) at La Silla, and the Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma. An antisolar dust tail is observed to be present from August 2010 through February 2011, while a dust trail aligned with the object’s orbit plane is also observed from December 2010 through August 2011. Assuming typical phase darkening behavior, P/La Sagra is seen to increase in brightness by >1 mag between August 2010 and December 2010, suggesting that dust production is ongoing over this period. These results strongly suggest that the observed activity is cometary in nature (i.e., driven by the sublimation of volatile material), and that P/La Sagra is therefore the most recent main-belt comet to be discovered. We find an approximate absolute magnitude for the nucleus of H_R = 17.9+/-0.2 mag, corresponding to a nucleus radius of ~0.7 km, assuming an albedo of p=0.05. Using optical spectroscopy to search for CN emission, we do not detect any conclusive evidence of sublimation products (i.e., gas emission), finding CN and H2O production rates of Q_CN<3x10^23 s^-1 and Q_H2O<10^26 s^-1, respectively. Numerical simulations indicate that P/La Sagra is dynamically stable for > 100 Myr, suggesting that it is likely native to its current location and that its composition is likely representative of other objects in the same region of the main belt, though the relatively close proximity of the 13:6 mean-motion resonance with Jupiter and the (3,-2,-1) three-body mean-motion resonance with Jupiter and Saturn mean that dynamical instability on larger timescales cannot be ruled out.
Source arXiv, 1109.6350
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