73p/Schwassmann–Wachmann 3 – One Orbit after Break-Up: Search for Fragments |
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Authors: | Boehnhardt Hermann Holdstock Stuart Hainaut Olivier Tozzi Gian Paolo Benetti Stefano Licandro Javier |
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Institution: | (1) European Southern Observatory, Alonso de Cordova, 3107, Santiago de Chile;(2) Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Largo E. Fermi, I-50125 Firenze, Italy;(3) Astronomical Observatory of Padova, Vicolo dell' Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padova, Italy;(4) Centro Galileo Galilei & Telescopio Nazionale Galileo TNG, P.O. Box 565, 38700 Santa Cruz de La Palma, Spain |
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Abstract: | We report on our search campaign for the fragments of the Jupiter family cometand target of NASA's CONTOUR mission, Comet
3P/Schwassmann–Wachmann 3, one orbit revolution after the splitting of its nucleus in 1995 (Boehnhardt et al., 1995). Fragment
C was found back with coma in November 1999 at 4 AU inbound and it continued to be active during the perihelion arc until
at least December 2001 when we observed it last at 3.3 AU outbound. Fragment B was observed with coma between July and September
2001 when moving outbound from 2.35 to 2.75 AU. The search for other fragments including A, D (Boehnhardt et al., 1995) and
E (Kodata et al., 2000a, b; Nakamura et al., 2000) in a search area of 15 × 4 arcmin starting at fragment C along direction
of the extended radius vector was not successful in July and September 2001. The limiting magnitude of this search of ∼ 25
mag in R puts an upper limit on the radius of potential fragments of about 200 m (assuming albedo 0.04). The orbit deceleration
parameter and the observed coma brightness of component C suggest that this object is the primary fragment that may contain
a major part of the original nucleus. |
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Keywords: | Comet 73P/Schwassmann– Wachmann 3 fragments nucleus splitting |
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