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Spectroscopic identification of water emission from a main-belt comet

Main-belt comets are small Solar System bodies located in the asteroid belt that repeatedly exhibit comet-like activity (that is, dust comae or tails) during their perihelion passages, strongly indicating ice sublimation(1,2). Although the existence of main-belt comets implies the presence of extant...

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Autores principales: Kelley, Michael S. P., Hsieh, Henry H., Bodewits, Dennis, Saki, Mohammad, Villanueva, Geronimo L., Milam, Stefanie N., Hammel, Heidi B.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10371862/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37187210
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06152-y
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author Kelley, Michael S. P.
Hsieh, Henry H.
Bodewits, Dennis
Saki, Mohammad
Villanueva, Geronimo L.
Milam, Stefanie N.
Hammel, Heidi B.
author_facet Kelley, Michael S. P.
Hsieh, Henry H.
Bodewits, Dennis
Saki, Mohammad
Villanueva, Geronimo L.
Milam, Stefanie N.
Hammel, Heidi B.
author_sort Kelley, Michael S. P.
collection PubMed
description Main-belt comets are small Solar System bodies located in the asteroid belt that repeatedly exhibit comet-like activity (that is, dust comae or tails) during their perihelion passages, strongly indicating ice sublimation(1,2). Although the existence of main-belt comets implies the presence of extant water ice in the asteroid belt, no gas has been detected around these objects despite intense scrutiny with the world’s largest telescopes(3). Here we present James Webb Space Telescope observations that clearly show that main-belt comet 238P/Read has a coma of water vapour, but lacks a significant CO(2) gas coma. Our findings demonstrate that the activity of comet Read is driven by water–ice sublimation, and implies that main-belt comets are fundamentally different from the general cometary population. Whether or not comet Read experienced different formation circumstances or evolutionary history, it is unlikely to be a recent asteroid belt interloper from the outer Solar System. On the basis of these results, main-belt comets appear to represent a sample of volatile material that is currently unrepresented in observations of classical comets and the meteoritic record, making them important for understanding the early Solar System’s volatile inventory and its subsequent evolution.
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spelling pubmed-103718622023-07-28 Spectroscopic identification of water emission from a main-belt comet Kelley, Michael S. P. Hsieh, Henry H. Bodewits, Dennis Saki, Mohammad Villanueva, Geronimo L. Milam, Stefanie N. Hammel, Heidi B. Nature Article Main-belt comets are small Solar System bodies located in the asteroid belt that repeatedly exhibit comet-like activity (that is, dust comae or tails) during their perihelion passages, strongly indicating ice sublimation(1,2). Although the existence of main-belt comets implies the presence of extant water ice in the asteroid belt, no gas has been detected around these objects despite intense scrutiny with the world’s largest telescopes(3). Here we present James Webb Space Telescope observations that clearly show that main-belt comet 238P/Read has a coma of water vapour, but lacks a significant CO(2) gas coma. Our findings demonstrate that the activity of comet Read is driven by water–ice sublimation, and implies that main-belt comets are fundamentally different from the general cometary population. Whether or not comet Read experienced different formation circumstances or evolutionary history, it is unlikely to be a recent asteroid belt interloper from the outer Solar System. On the basis of these results, main-belt comets appear to represent a sample of volatile material that is currently unrepresented in observations of classical comets and the meteoritic record, making them important for understanding the early Solar System’s volatile inventory and its subsequent evolution. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-05-15 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC10371862/ /pubmed/37187210 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06152-y Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Kelley, Michael S. P.
Hsieh, Henry H.
Bodewits, Dennis
Saki, Mohammad
Villanueva, Geronimo L.
Milam, Stefanie N.
Hammel, Heidi B.
Spectroscopic identification of water emission from a main-belt comet
title Spectroscopic identification of water emission from a main-belt comet
title_full Spectroscopic identification of water emission from a main-belt comet
title_fullStr Spectroscopic identification of water emission from a main-belt comet
title_full_unstemmed Spectroscopic identification of water emission from a main-belt comet
title_short Spectroscopic identification of water emission from a main-belt comet
title_sort spectroscopic identification of water emission from a main-belt comet
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10371862/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37187210
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06152-y
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