Why Comets Exhibit Outbursts? A Lesson from Holmes and its Miniature

Comets are mysterious travelers from outer Solar System. It is considered that comets loose their subsurface ice once they were injected into a snow-line of the solar system, at the same time, develop adiathermic dust layers on the surface in a time scale of ~10,000 years. They eventually become inactive (see also the presentation by Yoonyoung Kim et al.). Optical similarity between comets and asteroids in comet-like orbits suggests the existence of such dormant or inactive comets supporting the evolutionary scenario. However, unforeseen accidents cast a misgiving to modify the stereotype. A periodic comet, 17P/Holmes, is known as comet with very low activity before 2007. However, the comet suddenly exhibited an outburst in 2007 October, which is known as the most energetic cometary outburst since the beginning of modern astronomy. On the other hand, another periodic comet, P/2010 V1, was not known before 2010 November probably because of low activity and discovered while it experienced outburst. We investigated the time-evolution of the magnitudes and the morphological developments based on the dynamical theory of dust grains, and derived the energy per unit mass of ~10,000 J/kg. From these observational evidences, we suggest that crystallization of buried amorphous ice (even in low-activity comets) can be responsible for the dramatic cometary outbursts.