Cometary cryo-volcanism: Source regions and a model for the UT 2005 June 14 and other mini-outbursts on Comet 9P/Tempel 1

Belton, M. J. S.; Feldman, P. D.; A’Hearn, Michael F.; Carcich, B.

doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2008.07.009

Cited by 40 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Dust activities from the night side of a comet have been observed in several previous comet missions (Sekanina et al 2004;Farnham et al 2007Farnham et al , 2013Feaga et al 2007;Belton et al 2008;A'Hearn et al 2011;Bruck Syal et al 2013). Many of these activities manifest themselves as filaments, or jets, originating in unilluminated areas on the nucleus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Many of these activities manifest themselves as filaments, or jets, originating in unilluminated areas on the nucleus. Some of these dust activities that occur far into the night side are classified as outbursts, probably involving super volatiles (Feaga et al 2007;Belton et al 2008). Those observed near sunrise are possibly triggered by sublimation of water ice and of super volatiles that have refrozen and accumulated on the surface during the night (Feaga et al 2007;Prialnik et al 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sunset jets observed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko sustained by subsurface thermal lag

Shi

Sierks

et al. 2016

A&A

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We present observations of sunset jets on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by Rosetta/OSIRIS camera. In late April 2015, when the comet was at a heliocentric distance of ∼1.8 AU, clusters of dust jets that originated in the Ma'at region on the comet's small lobe were identified from multiple images and were apparently sustained for about an hour beyond local sunset. Emanating from the shadowed nucleus, these jets became visible by solar illumination at their apparent sources up to only a few tens of meters above the nucleus surface. We investigate the plausibility of these jets as having been triggered by water ice sublimation and sustained by thermal lag in the subsurface beyond sunset. A general thermo-physical model was parameterized such that the thermal lag in the subsurface is consistent with the elapsed time of observation after sunset. It is found that the sublimation of water ice from a depth of 6 mm and with a low thermal inertia of 50 W m −2 K −1 s 1/2 could explain the spatial pattern and evolution of the apparent sources, particularly their disappearance due to the eventual cooling of the subsurface. Our analysis suggests that these sunset jets were essentially day-side dust activities that continued after sunset. Specific observational conditions for the sunset jets constrain their possible sources to mostly within the less abrupt, dusty terrains. The uneven distribution of these jets is possibly related to subsurface inhomogeneities in the dusty area.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sunset jets observed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko sustained by subsurface thermal lag

Shi

Sierks

et al. 2016

A&A

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“…16P/Brooks 2 and D/1993 F2 (Shoemaker-Levy 9) both underwent tidal splitting during close encounters with Jupiter, leading to estimates of 0.1 kPa and ∼0.38 kPa for the tensile strengths of the nuclei (Sekanina & Yeomans 1985;Sekanina et al 1998). Based on observations of mini-outbursts, Belton et al (2008) estimated the strength of the sub-surface material of 9P/Tempel 1 to be not much more than 0.01-0.1 kPa, while A' Hearn et al (2005) found that the strength of the surface must also be extremely low (<0.065 kPa). Only a few comets have estimated tensile strengths and are not necessarily representative of all JFCs.…”

Section: Why Did 17p Outburst?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Lingering Grains of Truth Around Comet 17p/Holmes

Stevenson

Bauer

Kramer

et al. 2014

ApJ

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Comet 17P/Holmes underwent a massive outburst in 2007 October, brightening by a factor of almost a million in under 48 hr. We used infrared images taken by the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer mission to characterize the comet as it appeared at a heliocentric distance of 5.1 AU almost 3 yr after the outburst. The comet appeared to be active with a coma and dust trail along the orbital plane. We constrained the diameter, albedo, and beaming parameter of the nucleus to 4.135 ± 0.610 km, 0.03 ± 0.01, and 1.03 ± 0.21, respectively. The properties of the nucleus are consistent with those of other Jupiter family comets. The best-fit temperature of the coma was 134 ± 11 K, slightly higher than the blackbody temperature at that heliocentric distance. Using Finson-Probstein modeling, we found that the morphology of the trail was consistent with ejection during the 2007 outburst and was made up of dust grains between 250 μm and a few cm in radius. The trail mass was ∼1.2-5.3 × 10 10 kg.

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“…Amongst the suggested mechanisms are fluidization of a weakly bound mixture of ice and dust initiated by a phase change boundary between amorphous and crystalline ice (Belton & Melosh 2009), cryovolcanism (Belton 2008) and impacts of small meteorites (Hughes 1999). They are usually thought to be initiated by a kind of "explosion" (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A mini outburst from the nightside of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko observed by the OSIRIS camera on Rosetta

Knollenberg¹,

Lin²,

Hviid³

et al. 2016

A&A

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Context. On 12 March 2015 the OSIRIS WAC camera onboard the ESA Rosetta spacecraft orbiting comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko observed a small outburst originating from the Imhotep region at the foot of the big lobe of the comet. These measurements are unique since it was the first time that the initial phase of a transient outburst event could be directly observed. Aims. We investigate the evolution of the dust jet in order to derive clues about the outburst source mechanism and the ejected dust particles, in particular the dust mass, dust-to-gas ratio and the particle size distribution. Methods. Analysis of the images and of the observation geometry using comet shape models in combination with gasdynamic modeling of the transient dust jet were the main tools used in this study. Synthetic images were computed for comparison with the observations. Results. Analysis of the geometry revealed that the source region was not illuminated until 1.5 h after the event implying true nightside activity was observed. The outburst lasted for less than one hour and the average dust production rate during the initial four minutes was of the order of 1 kg/s. During this time the outburst dust production rate was approximately constant, no sign for an initial explosion could be detected. For dust grains between 0.01−1 mm a power law size distribution characterized by an index of about 2.6 provides the best fit to the observed radiance profiles. The dust-to-gas ratio of the outburst jet is in the range 0.6−1.8.

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Cometary cryo-volcanism: Source regions and a model for the UT 2005 June 14 and other mini-outbursts on Comet 9P/Tempel 1

Cited by 40 publications

References 32 publications

Sunset jets observed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko sustained by subsurface thermal lag

Sunset jets observed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko sustained by subsurface thermal lag

Lingering Grains of Truth Around Comet 17p/Holmes

A mini outburst from the nightside of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko observed by the OSIRIS camera on Rosetta

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