Lingering grains of truth around comet 17P/HOLMES
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, MS 183-427, Pasadena, CA 91109 (United States)
- Department of Physics, University of Central Florida, 4000 Central Florida Blvd, Orlando, FL 32816 (United States)
Comet 17P/Holmes underwent a massive outburst in 2007 October, brightening by a factor of almost a million in under 48 hr. We used infrared images taken by the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer mission to characterize the comet as it appeared at a heliocentric distance of 5.1 AU almost 3 yr after the outburst. The comet appeared to be active with a coma and dust trail along the orbital plane. We constrained the diameter, albedo, and beaming parameter of the nucleus to 4.135 ± 0.610 km, 0.03 ± 0.01, and 1.03 ± 0.21, respectively. The properties of the nucleus are consistent with those of other Jupiter family comets. The best-fit temperature of the coma was 134 ± 11 K, slightly higher than the blackbody temperature at that heliocentric distance. Using Finson-Probstein modeling, we found that the morphology of the trail was consistent with ejection during the 2007 outburst and was made up of dust grains between 250 μm and a few cm in radius. The trail mass was ∼1.2-5.3 × 10{sup 10} kg.
- OSTI ID:
- 22356789
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 787, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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