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The close encounter of Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) with Mars on October 19, 2014 presented an extremely rare opportunity to obtain the first flyby quality data of the nucleus and inner coma of a dynamically new comet. However, the…
Context. Dust halos or shells, along with linear dark structures along the axes of dust tails, are commonly observed in many long-period comets near perihelion. Examples range from the recent C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) to historical…
The dust ejecta of Main-Belt Comet P/2010 A2 (LINEAR) have been observed with several telescopes at the at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos on La Palma, Spain. Application of an inverse dust tail Monte Carlo method to the images…
When viewed from Earth, most of what we observe of a comet is dust. The influence of solar radiation pressure on the trajectories of dust particles depends on their cross-section to mass ratio. Hence solar radiation pressure acts like a…
Previously unknown asteroid P/2010 A2 rose to prominence in 2010 by forming a transient, comet-like tail consisting of ejected dust. The observed dust production was interpreted as either the result of a hypervelocity impact with a smaller…
We present initial observations of the newly-discovered active asteroid 313P/Gibbs (formerly P/2014 S4), taken to characterize its nucleus and comet-like activity. The central object has a radius $\sim$0.5 km (geometric albedo 0.05…
We present a study of the newly-discovered main-belt comet P/2008 R1 (Garradd), an object with the dynamical characteristics of an asteroid and the physical characteristics of a comet. Photometry sets a limit to the effective radius of the…
We report the discovery of four dusty cometary tails around low mass stars in two young clusters belonging to the W5 star forming region. Fits to the observed emission profiles from 24 micron observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope…
We present an observational and dynamical study of newly discovered main-belt comet 313P/Gibbs. We find that the object is clearly active both in observations obtained in 2014 and in precovery observations obtained in 2003 by the Sloan…
Strange-looking dust cloud around asteroid (596) Scheila was discovered on 2010 December 11.44-11.47. Unlike normal cometary tails, it consisted of three tails and faded within two months. We constructed a model to reproduce the morphology…
It is well known that some Main Belt asteroids show comet-like features. A representative example is the first known Main Belt comet 133P/(7968) Elst-Pizarro. If the mechanisms causing this activity are too weak to develop visually evident…
Periodic comets of different dynamical groups with orbits at 2 - 5 AU still occasionally active. The observed dust activity of such objects can be connected with processes of water ice sublimation (MBCs) or crystallization of amorphous…
The interstellar traveler, 2I/Borisov, is the first clearly active extrasolar comet, ever detected in our Solar system. We obtained high-resolution interferometric observations of 2I/Borisov with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter…
We analyze the physical properties and dynamical origin of a curved jet of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko that was observed repeatedly in several nucleus rotations starting on May 30 and persisting until early August, 2015. We simulated…
We observed 34 comets using the 24 micron camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope. Each image contains the nucleus and covers at least 10^6 km of each comet's orbit. Debris trails due to mm-sized or larger particles were found along the…
The seven known main belt comets (MBCs) have orbital characteristics of main belt asteroids yet exhibit dust ejection like comets. In order to constrain their physical and orbital properties we searched the Thousand Asteroid Light Curve…
Re-examination of the COBE DIRBE data reveals the thermal emission of several comet dust trails. The dust trails of 1P/Halley, 169P/NEAT, and 3200 Phaethon have not been previously reported. The known trails of 2P/Encke, and…
Main-belt asteroid (6478) Gault was observed to show cometary features in early 2019. To investigate the cause, we conducted {\it BVR} observations at Xingming Observatory, China, from 2019 January to April. The two tails were formed around…
Some asteroids eject dust, unexpectedly producing transient, comet-like comae and tails. First ascribed to the sublimation of near-surface water ice, mass losing asteroids (also called "main-belt comets") can in fact be driven by a…
We present the results of our search for a dynamical family around the active asteroid P/2012F5 (Gibbs). By applying the hierarchical clustering method, we discover an extremely compact 9-body cluster associated with P/2012F5. The…