Issue |
A&A
Volume 549, January 2013
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A13 | |
Number of page(s) | 14 | |
Section | Planets and planetary systems | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201118428 | |
Published online | 06 December 2012 |
P/2010 A2 LINEAR
II. Dynamical dust modelling
1
Institute for Astronomy (IfA), University of Hawai’i,
2680 Woodlawn Drive,
Honolulu
HI
96822,
USA
e-mail: kleyna@ifa.hawaii.edu
2
European Southern Observatory (ESO), Karl Schwarzschild Straße, 85748
Garching bei München,
Germany
e-mail: ohainaut@eso.org
Received: 10 November 2011
Accepted: 25 August 2012
P/2010 A2 is an object on an asteroidal orbit that was observed to have an extended tail or debris trail in January 2010. In this work, we fit the outburst of P/2010 A2 with a conical burst model, and verify previous suspicions that this was a one-time collisional event rather than a sustained cometary outburst, implying that P/2010 A2 is not a new main belt comet driven by ice sublimation. We find that the best-fit cone opening angle is ~40° to ~50°, in agreement with numerical and laboratory simulations of cratering events. Mapping debris orbits to sky positions suggests that the distinctive arc features in the debris correspond to the same debris cone inferred from the extended dust. From the velocity of the debris, and from the presence of a velocity maximum at around 15 cm s-1, we infer that the surface of A2 probably has a very low strength (≲1 kPa), comparable to lunar regolith.
Key words: minor planets, asteroids: individual: P/2010 A2 LINEAR / comets: general / techniques: image processing
© ESO, 2012
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.