Images and low-resolution spectra of the near-Earth Jupiter family comet (JFC) 249P/LINEAR in the visible range obtained with the instrument OSIRIS in the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias on January 3, 4, 6 and February 6, 2016 are presented, together with a series of images obtained with the 0.4m telescope of the Great Shefford Observatory. The reflectance spectrum of 249P is similar to that of a B-type asteroid. The comet has an absolute (visual) nuclear magnitude HV=17.0±0.4, which corresponds to a radius of about 1-1.3 km for a geometric albedo ∼0.04−0.07. From the analysis of GTC images using a Monte Carlo dust tail code we find that the time of maximum dust ejection rate was around 1.6 days before perihelion. We may be in front of a new class of near-Earth JFC whose source region is not the distant trans-neptunian population, but much closer in the asteroid belt. Therefore, 249P/LINEAR may be a near-Earth counterpart of the so-called main-belt comets or active asteroids.
@article{arxiv.1704.04639,
title = {Physical and dynamical properties of the anomalous comet 249P/LINEAR},
author = {Julio A. Fernández and Javier Licandro and Fernando Moreno and Andrea Sosa and Antonio Cabrera-Lavers and Julia de León and Peter Birtwhistle},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.04639},
year = {2017}
}