[BAA Comets] Comet P/2013 P5: An asteroid collision or what?

Richard Miles rmiles.btee at btinternet.com
Tue Aug 27 17:49:02 BST 2013


Comet P/2013 P5 (PANSTARRS) announced today on MPEC 2013-Q37 and CBET 3639 has unusual orbital characteristics akin to those of P/2010 A2 (LINEAR) which is considered to be cometary owing to an asteroid-asteroid collision (although rotationally-induced disruption of a single asteroid is not entirely ruled out).

Compare these orbital statistics:

Comet:  P/2010 A2     P/2013 P5
q(AU)     2.004     1.934
e         0.125     0.117
i(deg)     5.26     4.98
P(yr)     3.47      3.24

These two objects are uncannily similar and quite unlike most short-period comets. Might these two objects be related in some way? Certainly mysterious.

CBET 3639 states that "Follow-up exposures by M. Micheli (measured with D. J. Tholen) using the 2.24-m University of Hawaii reflector at Mauna Kea on Aug. 16.5 UT show that the head of the comet is fairly stellar in appearance, but there is a tail at least 90" long in position angle 238 deg.  Have yet to see an image but it sounds eerily reminiscent of P/2010 A2 !

Maybe a target for HST so as to compare it with P/2010 A2 (LINEAR).

Richard Miles
BAA


More information about the Comets-disc mailing list