Related papers: Comet 66P/du Toit: not a near Earth main belt come…
The unique inner-belt asteroid 311P/PANSTARRS (formerly P/2013 P5) is notable for its sporadic, comet-like ejection of dust in nine distinct epochs spread over $\sim$250 days in 2013. This curious behavior has been interpreted as the…
On 3 July 2016, several instruments on board ESA's Rosetta spacecraft detected signs of an outburst event on comet 67P, at a heliocentric distance of 3.32 AU from the sun, outbound from perihelion. We here report on the inferred properties…
We report observations of the reactivations of main-belt comets 238P/Read and 288P/(300163) 2006 VW139, that also track the evolution of each object's activity over several months in 2016 and 2017. We additionally identify and analyze…
We present initial observations of the interstellar body 2I/(2019 Q4) Borisov taken to determine its nature prior to the perihelion in 2019 December. Images from the Nordic Optical Telescope show a prominent, morphologically stable dust…
The prime objective is to settle a contradiction between a high nongravitational acceleration affecting the orbital motion of comet C/1995 O1 and its enormous nucleus by modeling it as a compact cluster of boulder-sized fragments held…
Comet 17P/Holmes was observed for linear polarisation using the optical polarimeter mounted on the 1.2m telescope atop Gurushikhar peak near Mt. Abu during the period November-December 2007. Observations were conducted through the IHW…
We present observations of main-belt comet 259P/Garradd from four months prior to its 2017 perihelion passage to five months after perihelion using the Gemini North and South telescopes. The object was confirmed to be active during this…
It is speculated that some weakly active comets may be transitional objects between active and dormant comets. These objects are at a unique stage of the evolution of cometary nuclei, as they are still identifiable as active comets, in…
We present Hubble Space Telescope Observations of (596) Scheila during its recent dust outburst. The nucleus remained point-like with absolute magnitude V(1,1,0) = 8.85+/-0.02 in our data, equal to the pre-outburst value, with no secondary…
The relation between ice composition in the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on the one hand and relative abundances of volatiles in the coma on the other hand is important for the interpretation of density measurements in the…
We use measurements from the Rosetta plasma consortium (RPC) Langmuir probe (LAP) and mutual impedance probe (MIP) to study the spatial distribution of low-energy plasma in the near-nucleus coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The…
Comets are thought to preserve almost pristine dust particles, thus providing a unique sample of the properties of the early solar nebula. The microscopic properties of this dust played a key part in particle aggregation during the…
Long period comet C/2014 B1 (Schwartz) exhibits a remarkable optical appearance, like that of a discus or bi-convex lens viewed edgewise. Our measurements in the four years since discovery reveal a unique elongated dust coma whose…
The Rosetta space probe accompanied comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for more than two years, obtaining an unprecedented amount of unique data of the comet nucleus and inner coma. This work focuses identifying the source regions of faint…
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…
Previous studies have suggested that Comet 209P/LINEAR may produce strong me- teor activity on Earth on 2014 May 24; however, exact timing and activity level is difficult to estimate due to the limited physical observations of the comet.…
Remote investigations of the ancient solar system matter has been traditionally carried out through the observations of long-period (LP) comets that are less affected by solar irradiation than the short-period counterparts orbiting much…
Volatile compositions of asteroids provide information on the Solar System history and the origins of Earth's volatiles. Visible to near-infrared observations at wavelengths of $<2.5\ {\rm \mu m}$ have suggested a genetic link between outer…
On 31 August 2019, an interstellar comet was discovered as it passed through the Solar System (2I/Borisov). Based on initial imaging observations, 2I/Borisov appeared to be completely similar to ordinary Solar System comets - an unexpected…
A circumsolar dust ring has been recently discovered close to the orbit of Mercury. There are currently no hypotheses for the origin of this ring in the literature, so we explore four different origin scenarios here: the dust originated…