English

Thermal Infrared and Optical Photometry of Asteroidal Comet C/2002 CE$_{10}$

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2018-02-28 v1

Abstract

C/2002 CE10_{10} is an object in a retrograde elliptical orbit with Tisserand parameter 0.853-0.853 indicating a likely origin in the Oort Cloud. It appears to be a rather inactive comet since no coma and only a very weak tail was detected during the past perihelion passage. We present multi-color optical photometry, lightcurve and thermal mid-IR observations of the asteroidal comet. \textcolor{blue}{ With the photometric analysis in BVRIBVRI, the surface color is found to be redder than asteroids, corresponding to cometary nuclei and TNOs/Centaurs. The time-resolved differential photometry supports a rotation period of 8.19±\pm0.05 h. The effective diameter and the geometric albedo are 17.9±\pm0.9 km and 0.03±\pm0.01, respectively, indicating a very dark reflectance of the surface. The dark and redder surface color of C/2002 CE10_{10} may be attribute to devolatilized material by surface aging suffered from the irradiation by cosmic rays or from impact by dust particles in the Oort Cloud. Alternatively, C/2002 CE10_{10} was formed of very dark refractory material originally like a rocky planetesimal. In both cases, this object lacks ices (on the surface at least). The dynamical and known physical characteristics of C/2002 CE10_{10} are best compatible with those of the Damocloids population in the Solar System, that appear to be exhaust cometary nucleus in Halley-type orbits. The study of physical properties of rocky Oort cloud objects may give us a key for the formation of the Oort cloud and the solar system.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1712.08388,
  title  = {Thermal Infrared and Optical Photometry of Asteroidal Comet C/2002 CE$_{10}$},
  author = {Tomohiko Sekiguchi and Seidai Miyasaka and Budi Dermawan and Thomas Mueller and Naruhisa Takato and Junichi Watanabe and Hermann Boehnhardt},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.08388},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

9 pages, 4 figures accepted to Icarus