Intermittent dust mass loss from activated asteroid P/2013 P5 (PANSTARRS)

Abstract

We present observations and models of the dust environment of activated asteroid P/2013 P5 (PANSTARRS). The object displayed a complex morphology during the observations, with the presence of multiple tails. We combined our own observations, all made with instrumentation attached to the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) on La Palma, with previously published Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images to build a model aimed at fitting all the observations. Altogether, the data cover a full 3-month period of observations which can be explained by an intermittent dust loss. The most plausible scenario is that of an asteroid rotating with the spinning axis oriented perpendicular to the orbit plane and loosing mass from the equatorial region, consistent with a rotational break-up. Assuming that the ejection velocity of the particles (v$\sim$0.02-0.05 m s${}^{-1}$) corresponds to the escape velocity, the object diameter is constrained to $\sim$30-130 m for bulk densities 3000 to 1000 kg m${}^{-3}$.

Accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (3)

• Asteroid family identification using the Hierarchical Clustering Method and WISE/NEOWISE physical properties
• A collision in 2009 as the origin of the debris trail of asteroid P/2010 A2
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Cited by in corpus (13)

• The Active Asteroids
• The Main-Belt Comets: The Pan-STARRS1 Perspective
• Episodic Ejection from Active Asteroid 311P/PANSTARRS
• SAFARI: Searching Asteroids For Activity Revealing Indicators
• Discovery and Characteristics of the Rapidly Rotating Active Asteroid (62412) 2000 SY178 in the Main Belt
• The Nucleus of Active Asteroid 311P/(2013 P5) PANSTARRS
• Dust loss from activated asteroid P/2015 X6
• New Active Asteroid 313P/Gibbs
• Dust Properties of Double-Tailed Active Asteroid (6478) Gault
• On the dust environment of Main-Belt Comet 313P/Gibbs
• Dust modelling and a dynamical study of comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak during its 2017 perihelion passage
• Active Asteroid 311P/PANSTARRS: Rotational Instability as the Origin of Multi-tails?
• Lifted particles from the fast spinning primary of the Near-Earth Asteroid (65803) Didymos