CN Jet Morphology and the Very Rapidly Changing Rotation Period of Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak

In the first half of 2017, Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak had its best apparition since its first discovery in 1858, remaining within 0.15 AU of Earth for three weeks and within 0.20 AU over a two month interval. These circumstances allowed us to study its coma morphology in search of possible jets, whose appearance and motion as a function of time would yield the rotation period and, with appropriate modeling, the pole orientation of the nucleus and source location(s). Imaging was obtained on a total of 45 nights between February 16 and July 2, using Lowell Observatory's 4.3-m Discovery Channel Telescope, the Hall 1.1-m telescope, and the robotic 0.8-m telescope. All narrowband CN images exhibit either one or two gas jets, and on most nights both jets appear as partial spirals with a clockwise rotation. Only a slow evolution of the jet morphology took place from mid-March to early June, presumably due to viewing geometry changes coupled with seasonal changes. Our coverage in late March was sufficient to rule out aliases of the rotation period, and further revealed a rapidly increasing period from about 24 hr to about 27 hr at the end of the month (Knight et al. 2017, CBET 4377). This rate of increase is roughly consistent with the solution of 19.9 hr found by Farnham et al. (2017, CBET 4375) in early March. Images from April 15 to May 4 yield an accelerating change in periods, passing 48 hr approximately on April 28. This is the fastest rate of change ever measured for a comet nucleus. These and other results, including those from Monte Carlo jet modeling just begun by us, will be presented.These studies were supported by NASA Planetary Astronomy grant NNX14AG81G and the Marcus Cometary Research Fund.