Polarimetric and Spectroscopic Observations of a Dynamically New Comet C/2012 J1 (Catalina)

Abstract

We present the analysis of the polarimetric and spectral data obtained for the dynamically new comet C/2012\,J1 (Catalina) when it was at a distance of 3.17~AU from the Sun. The observations were made at the prime focus of the 6-m BTA telescope using the SCORPIO-2 focal reducer. The map of the distribution of linear polarization in the cometary coma was constructed. The calculated value of linear polarization was on average about $-2\%$. Spectral analysis of the cometary coma allowed us to detect the emission of the CN molecule in the (0--0) band. The gas production rate was derived using the Haser model and amounted to $3.7\times 10^{23}$~molecules per second.

6 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Technique of Polarimetric Observations of Faint Objects at the 6-m BTA Telescope
• Distant activity of comet C/2002 VQ94 (LINEAR): optical spectrophotometric monitoring between 8.4 and 16.8 au from the Sun

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