P/2010 A2 LINEAR II: dynamical dust modelling

Abstract

P/2010 A2 is an object on an asteroidal orbit that was observed to have an extended tail or debris trail in January 2010. In this work, we fit the outburst of P/2010 A2 with a conical burst model, and verify previous suspicions that this was a one--time collisional event rather than an sustained cometary outburst, implying that P/2010 A2 is not a new Main Belt Comet driven by ice sublimation. We find that the best--fit cone opening angle is about 40 to 50 degrees, in agreement with numerical and laboratory simulations of cratering events. Mapping debris orbits to sky positions suggests that the distinctive arc features in the debris correspond to the same debris cone inferred from the extended dust. From the velocity of the debris, and from the presence of a velocity maximum at around 15 cm/s, we infer that the surface of A2 probably has a very low strength (<1 kPa), comparable to lunar regolith.

14 pages, 25 figures; accepted by Astronomy and Astrophysics

References in corpus (2)

• A collision in 2009 as the origin of the debris trail of asteroid P/2010 A2
• P/2010A2 LINEAR - I: An impact in the Asteroid Main Belt

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Origin of Earth's water: sources and constraints
• Characterizing Exoplanet Habitability
• Solar System Formation in the Context of Extra-Solar Planets
• SAFARI: Searching Asteroids For Activity Revealing Indicators
• Large Particles in Active Asteroid P/2010 A2
• Measuring the Fidelity of Asteroid Regolith and Cobble Simulants
• Dynamics of Large Fragments in the Tail of Active Asteroid P/2010 A2
• Discovery and Characteristics of the Rapidly Rotating Active Asteroid (62412) 2000 SY178 in the Main Belt
• Anisotropic Ejection from Active Asteroid P/2010 A2: An Implication of Impact Shattering on an Asteroid
• Hubble and Keck Telescope Observations of Active Asteroid 288P/300163 (2006 VW139)
• The location of Asteroidal Belt Comets (ABCs), in a comets' evolutionary diagram: The Lazarus Comets
• Active Asteroid 311P/PANSTARRS: Rotational Instability as the Origin of Multi-tails?
• Model for Asteroid Regolith to Guide Simulant Development
• New observational evidence of active asteroid P/2010 A2: Slow rotation of the largest fragment
• Modelling the brightness increase signature due to asteroid collisions