Multiple Outbursts of a Short-Periodic Comet 15P/Finlay

  • Published : 2015.04.10

Abstract

15P/Finlay is one of the Jupiter-Family Comets that has long been known since the late 19 century. The comet maintains the perihelion around 1.0 AU over a century, without showing any prominent activities (i.e. fragmentation or eruption) since the discovery. According to reports in unpublished observations, the comet exhibited an outburst in the middle of 2014 December. We conducted a imaging observation of 15P/Finlay just after the report, from 2014 December 23 to 2015 February 18 using three telescopes (the Okayama Astrophysical Observatory 50-cm telescope, the Ishigakijima Astronomical Observatory 105-cm telescope, and the Nishi-Harima Astronomical Observatory 2-m telescope), which constitute a portion of the OISTER (an inter-university observation network in the optical and infrared wavelengths). As a result of the frequent observations, we witnesses the second outburst around UT 2015 January 16. Such cometary outbursts draw the attention to researchers on ground that they could offer insight into the internal structure of comets, following a historical outburst occurred at 17P/Holmes on 2007 October 23. Although cometary outbursts have been often reported mostly in unpublished observations or unreviewed reports, it should be emphasized that there are not a sufficient number of astrophysical research which characterizes the physical properties by observing the aftermaths. This presentation provides a new observational result of 15P/Finlay outburst. Based on the morphological development of the dust cloud as well as the near-nuclear magnitude, we will derive the kinetic energy of the outburst. Finally we plan to compare the results of 15P/Finlay with those of analogical events at 17P/Holmes and P/2010 V1 (Ikeya-Murakami).

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