Title

The persistent activity of Jupiter-family comets at 3-7 AU

Authors

Authors

M. S. Kelley; Y. R. Fernandez; J. Licandro; C. M. Lisse; W. T. Reach; M. F. A'Hearn; J. Bauer; H. Campins; A. Fitzsimmons; O. Groussin; P. L. Lamy; S. C. Lowry; K. J. Meech; J. Pittichova; C. Snodgrass; I. Toth;H. A. Weaver

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

Icarus

Keywords

Comets; Comets, Dust; Comets, Coma; Infrared observations; SPITZER-SPACE-TELESCOPE; SHORT-PERIOD COMETS; DEEP IMPACT; 103P/HARTLEY; 2; SOLAR-SYSTEM; INNER COMA; NUCLEI; DUST; 9P/TEMPEL-1; PHOTOMETRY; Astronomy & Astrophysics

Abstract

We present an analysis of comet activity based on the Spitzer Space Telescope component of the Survey of the Ensemble Physical Properties of Cometary Nuclei. We show that the survey is well suited to measuring the activity of Jupiter-family comets at 3-7 AU from the Sun. Dust was detected in 33 of 89 targets (37 +/- 6%), and we conclude that 21 comets (24 +/- 5%) have morphologies that suggest ongoing or recent cometary activity. Our dust detections are sensitivity limited, therefore our measured activity rate is necessarily a lower limit. All comets with small perihelion distances (q < 1.8 AU) are inactive in our survey, and the active comets in our sample are strongly biased to post-perihelion epochs. We introduce the quantity epsilon f rho, intended to be a thermal emission counterpart to the often reported Af rho, and find that the comets with large perihelion distances likely have greater dust production rates than other comets in our survey at 3-7 AU from the Sun, indicating a bias in the discovered Jupiter-family comet population. By examining the orbital history of our survey sample, we suggest that comets perturbed to smaller perihelion distances in the past 150 yr are more likely to be active, but more study on this effect is needed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Journal Title

Icarus

Volume

225

Issue/Number

1

Publication Date

1-1-2013

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

475

Last Page

494

WOS Identifier

WOS:000321161800039

ISSN

0019-1035

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