Related papers: Pre-perihelion photometric behavior of comet C/201…

We present evidence to conclude that comet C/2012 S1 ISON is about to turn off or disintegrate.

We present polarization images of Comet ISON (C/2012 S1) taken with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) on UTC 2013 May 8 (rh = 3.81 AU, Delta = 4.34 AU), when the phase angle was alpha = 12.16 degrees. This phase angle is approximately…

Comets formed in the outer and cold parts of the disk which eventually evolved into our Solar System. Assuming that the comets have undergone no major processing, studying their composition provides insight in the pristine composition of…

Comets, relics from the early solar system, consist of dust and ice. The ice sublimates as comets approach the Sun, ejecting dust from their nuclei seen as activity. Different volatiles sublimate at different Sun-comet distances and eject…

We used the UltraViolet-Optical Telescope on board Swift to systematically follow the dynamically new comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) on its approach to the Sun. The comet was observed from a heliocentric distance of 4.5 AU pre-perihelion…

Intrinsically faint comets in nearly-parabolic orbits with perihelion distances much smaller than 1 AU exhibit strong propensity for suddenly disintegrating at a time not long before perihelion, as shown by Bortle (1991). Evidence from…

During its sungrazing perihelion passage, comet ISON appeared in the field of view of the SUMER spectrometer and allowed unique observations at far-ultraviolet wavelengths with high spatial and temporal resolution. We report results of…

Observations of the sungrazing comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) were carried out using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) at a heliocentric distance of 0.58-0.54 AU (pre-perihelion) on 2013 November 16-17. Temporally resolved…

A sequence of events, dominated by two outbursts and ending with the preperihelion disintegration of comet C/2017 S3, is examined. The onset times of the outbursts are determined with high accuracy from the light curve of the nuclear…

Comets and asteroids have long captured human curiosity, and until recently, all documented examples belonged to our Solar System. That changed with the discovery of the first known interstellar object, 1I/2017 U1 ('Oumuamua), in 2017. Two…

We present pre-perihelion infrared 8 to 31 micron spectrophotometric and imaging observations of comet C/2012 K1 (Pan-STARRS), a dynamically new Oort Cloud comet, conducted with NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy…

We have developed a 3-step criterion to decide if a comet coming from the Oort Cloud will disintegrate. If we apply this criterion to comet C/2013 US10 we find that the probability of disintegration is 92%. The Secular Light Curve of this…

Distant long-period comet C/2017 K2 has been outside the planetary region of the solar system for 3 Myr, negating the possibility that heat retained from the previous perihelion could be responsible for its activity. This inbound comet is…

C/1890 F1 Brooks belongs to a group of nineteen comets used by Jan Oort to support his famous hypothesis on the existence of a spherical cloud containing hundreds of billions of comets with orbits of semimajor axes between 50 and 150…

A 2000-2017 set of long-period comets with high-quality orbits of perihelion distance <1 AU is used to show that the objects that perish shortly before perihelion are nearly exclusively the Oort Cloud comets, especially those with perihelia…

We examine the rise and sudden demise of comet C/2010 X1 (Elenin) on its approach to perihelion. Discovered inbound at 4.2 AU, this long-period comet was predicted to become very bright when near perihelion, at 0.48 AU on 2011 September 10.…

Comet C2011 J2 (Linear), was discovered to the Catalina Sky Survey Observatory, based on University of Arizona. Is an hyperbolic comet passed to the perihelion at T 2013 Dec. 25.4020 TT. The distance q from the Sun is 3.443732 A.U., that…

Our goal was to characterize the distant gaseous and dust activity of comet C\2012 S1 (ISON), inbound, from observations of H2O, CO and the dust coma in the far-infrared and submillimeter domains. In this paper, we report observations…

We make the following predictions: (1) Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The Secular Light Curve (SLC) of this comet exhibits a photometric anomaly in magnitude that is present in 1982, 1996, 2002 and 2009. Thus it must be real. We interpret…

We present our results on the Chandra X-ray Observatory Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) observations of the bright Oort Cloud comets C/2012 S1 (ISON) and C/2011 L4 (PanSTARRS). ISON was observed between 2013 October 31-November 06…