Dust shells and dark linear structures on dust tails of historical and recent long-period comets

¹ Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, CSIC, Glorieta de la Astronomía s/n, 18008 Granada, Spain
² STARInstitute, Université de Liège, Allée du 6 Août 19c, 4000 Liège, Belgium

^★ Corresponding author; fernando@iaa.es

Received: 31 January 2025
Accepted: 10 March 2025

Abstract

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 comets such as the Great Comet of 1874, C/1874 H1 (Coggia).

Aims. While dust halos can readily be modeled as spin-modulated activity originating from the comet nucleus, their possible connection to those dark linear features has, to our knowledge, not been investigated. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the formation of these remarkable structures by modeling a sample of six long-period comets, using similar dust physical properties and ejection parameters, to explore whether they share a common origin.

Methods. To model the dust features, we employed a Monte Carlo procedure to generate synthetic images. The particles ejected from the comet nucleus follow a power-law size distribution and are released into interplanetary space at speeds determined by the ratio of solar radiation pressure to solar gravity, the heliocentric distance, and, as a new feature of the code, the solar zenith angle at the emission point.

Results. We demonstrate that, in all the cases analyzed, the dust shells form as a result of short-term events characterized by cyclically varying ejection of very small particles from large surface areas on the rotating nucleus. These events are triggered as these areas become freshly exposed to solar radiation near perihelion due to the high obliquity of the spin axes of their nuclei. The dark linear stripes along the tail axes may arise from a specific dependence of the ejection speeds on the square root of the cosine of the zenith angle, as is predicted by hydrodynamical modeling, but their presence is also dependent on the extent of the latitude region of emission that defines the velocity vector field.