Related papers: Thermal processing of Jupiter Family Comets during…

It was recently proposed that there exists a "gateway" in the orbital parameter space through which Centaurs transition to Jupiter-family Comets (JFCs). Further studies have implied that the majority of objects that eventually evolve into…

Centaurs--icy bodies orbiting beyond Jupiter and interior to Neptune--are believed to be dynamically related to Jupiter Family Comets (JFCs), which have aphelia near Jupiter's orbit and perihelia in the inner Solar System. Previous…

Born as ice-rich planetesimals, cometary nuclei were gravitationally scattered onto their current orbits in the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud during the giant planets' dynamical instability in the early stages of our Solar System's…

Large and deep depressions, also known as pits, are observed at the surface of all Jupiter Family Comets (JFCs) imaged by spacecraft missions. They offer the opportunity to glimpse into sub-surface characteristics of comet nuclei, and study…

Recent dynamical analyses suggest that some Jupiter family comets (JFCs) may originate in the main asteroid belt instead of the outer solar system. This possibility is particularly interesting given evidence that icy main-belt objects are…

Context. Jupiter-family comets (JFCs), which originate from the Kuiper belt and scattered disk, exhibit low-inclination and chaotic trajectories due to close encounters with Jupiter. Despite their typically short incursions into the inner…

Radio observations from decimetric to submillimetric wavelengths are now a basic tool for the investigation of comets. Spectroscopic observations allow us i) to monitor the gas production rate of the comets, by directly observing the water…

It has long been hypothesised that the Jupiter-family comets (JFCs) come from the scattered disc, an unstable planetesimal population beyond Neptune. This viewpoint has been widely accepted, but a few issues remain, the most prominent of…

We present the results of "snapshot" numerical integrations of test particles representing comet-like and asteroid-like objects in the inner solar system aimed at investigating the short-term dynamical evolution of objects close to the…

The short period Jupiter family comets (JFCs) are thought to originate in the Kuiper Belt; specifically, a dynamical subclass of the Kuiper Belt known as the `scattered disk' is argued to be the dominant source of JFCs. However, the best…

Rotational spin-up due to outgassing of comet nuclei has been identified as a possible mechanism for considerable mass-loss and splitting. We report a search for spin changes for three large Jupiter-family comets (JFCs): 14P/Wolf,…

Jupiter-family comets (JFCs) have orbital periods of less than 20 years and therefore undergo more frequent sublimation compared to other comet populations. The JFCs therefore represent the ideal dynamical population for investigating the…

We present results from SEPPCoN, an on-going Survey of the Ensemble Physical Properties of Cometary Nuclei. In this report we discuss mid-infrared measurements of the thermal emission from 89 nuclei of Jupiter-family comets (JFCs). All data…

We studied the orbital evolution of Jupiter-family comets (JFCs), Halley-type comets (HTCs), and long-period comets, and probabilities of their collisions with planets. In our runs the probability of a collision of one object with the Earth…

Comet--asteroid transition (CAT) objects are small solar system bodies in the process of evolving from cometary nuclei into asteroids, as they gradually lose volatile substances due to solar heating. The volatile material is mainly water…

Comets provide a valuable window into the chemical and physical conditions at the time of their formation in the young solar system. We seek insights into where and when these objects formed by comparing the range of abundances observed for…

The study of comets affords a unique window into the birth, infancy, and subsequent history of the solar system. There is strong evidence that comets incorporated pristine interstellar material as well as processed nebular matter, providing…

Jupiter-family Comets (JFCs) exhibit a wide range of activity levels and mass-loss over their orbits. We analyzed high-cadence observations of 42 active JFCs with the wide-field Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) survey…

During protoplanetary disk formation, dust grains located in the outer disk retain their pristine icy composition, while solids in the inner stellar-heated disk undergo volatile loss. This process may have left a fossil record in Solar…

We report new lightcurves and phase functions for nine Jupiter-family comets (JFCs). They were observed in the period 2004-2015 with various ground telescopes as part of the Survey of Ensemble Physical Properties of Cometary Nuclei…