The extremely red colors of some transneptunian objects and Centaurs are not seen among the Jupiter family comets which supposedly derive from them. Could this mismatch result from sublimation loss of colorless ice? Radiative transfer models show that mixtures of volatile ice and nonvolatile organics could be extremely red, but become progressively darker and less red as the ice sublimates away.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0811.2433,
title = {Is the Missing Ultra-Red Material Colorless Ice?},
author = {W. M. Grundy},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0811.2433},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
10 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in Icarus