Dust Environment Model of the Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov
Abstract
2I/Borisov is the first interstellar comet discovered on 2019 August 30, and it soon showed a coma and a dust tail. This study reports the results of images obtained at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo telescope, on La Palma - Canary Islands, in 2019 November and December. The images have been obtained with the R filter in order to apply our dust tail model. The model has been applied to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and compared to the Rosetta dust measurements showing a very good agreement. It has been applied to the comet 2I/Borisov, using almost the same parameters, obtaining a dust environment similar to that of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, suggesting that the activity may be very similar. The dust tail analysis provided a dust-loss rate Qd ≈ 35 kg s-1 in 2019 November and Qd ≈ 30 kg s-1 in 2019 December.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- April 2020
- DOI:
- 10.3847/2041-8213/ab8455
- Bibcode:
- 2020ApJ...893L..12C
- Keywords:
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- Planetary science;
- Comets;
- 1255;
- 280