A short-duration event as the cause of dust ejection from Main-Belt Comet P/2012 F5 (Gibbs)

Abstract

We present observations and an interpretative model of the dust environment of Main-Belt Comet P/2010 F5 (Gibbs). The narrow dust trails observed can be interpreted unequivocally as an impulsive event that took place around 2011 July 1st with an uncertainty of $\pm$10 days, and a duration of less than a day, possibly of the order of a few hours. The best Monte Carlo dust model fits to the observed trail brightness imply ejection velocities in the range 8-10 cm s${}^{-1}$ for particle sizes between 30 cm and 130 $\mu$m. This weak dependence of velocity on size contrasts with that expected from ice sublimation, and agrees with that found recently for (596) Scheila, a likely impacted asteroid. The particles seen in the trail are found to follow a power-law size distribution of index $\approx$-3.7. Assuming that the slowest particles were ejected at the escape velocity of the nucleus, its size is constrained to about 200-300 m in diameter. The total ejected dust mass is $\gtrsim 5\times 10^8$ kg, with represents approximately 4 to 20% of the nucleus mass.

Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters

References in corpus (4)

• A collision in 2009 as the origin of the debris trail of asteroid P/2010 A2
• Main-Belt Comet P/2008 R1 (Garradd)
• Physical Properties of Main-Belt Comet P/2005 U1 (Read)
• Characterization of Active Main Belt Object P/2012 F5 (Gibbs): A Possible Impacted Asteroid

Cited by in corpus (25)

• The Main Belt Comets and Ice in the Solar System
• The Active Asteroids
• The Main-Belt Comets: The Pan-STARRS1 Perspective
• Asteroid Family Associations of Active Asteroids
• Anatomy of an Asteroid Break-Up: The Case of P/2013 R3
• Main-Belt Comet P/2012 T1 (PANSTARRS)
• SAFARI: Searching Asteroids For Activity Revealing Indicators
• Fast Rotation and Trailing Fragments of the Active Asteroid P/2012 F5 (Gibbs)
• Main-belt comets in the Palomar Transient Factory survey: I. The search for extendedness
• Discovery of a young asteroid cluster associated with P/2012~F5 (Gibbs)
• Multiple Outbursts of Asteroid (6478) Gault
• Measuring the Fidelity of Asteroid Regolith and Cobble Simulants
• Discovery and Characteristics of the Rapidly Rotating Active Asteroid (62412) 2000 SY178 in the Main Belt
• The dust environment of Main-Belt Comet P/2012 T1 (PANSTARRS)
• Intermittent dust mass loss from activated asteroid P/2013 P5 (PANSTARRS)
• Dust loss from activated asteroid P/2015 X6
• The Nucleus of Main-Belt Comet P/2010 R2 (La Sagra)
• On the dust environment of Main-Belt Comet 313P/Gibbs
• Search for the Return of Activity in Active Asteroid 176P/LINEAR
• New Active Asteroid (6478) Gault
• The location of Asteroidal Belt Comets (ABCs), in a comets' evolutionary diagram: The Lazarus Comets
• Model for Asteroid Regolith to Guide Simulant Development
• Fragmenting Active Asteroid 331P/Gibbs
• Disintegrating In-Bound Long-Period Comet C/2019 J2
• Fragment Dynamics in Active Asteroid 331P/Gibbs