Note on the dynamical evolution of C/2017 K2 PANSTARRS

Abstract

(Abreviated) Comet C/2017 K2 PANSTARRS drew attention to its activity already at a time of its discovery in May 2017 when it was about 16 au from the Sun. This Oort spike comet will approach its perihelion in December 2022, and the question about its dynamical past is one of the important issues to explore. To this aim it is necessary to obtain its precise osculating orbit, its original orbit, and propagate its motion backwards in time to the previous perihelion. We study a dynamical evolution of C/2017 K2 to the previous perihelion (backward calculations for about 3-4 Myr) as well as to the future (forward calculations for about 0.033 Myr). Outside the planetary system both Galactic and stellar perturbations were taken into account. We derived that C/2017 K2 is a dynamically old Oort spike comet (1/a${}_{prev}$ = (48.7 $\pm$ 7,9) x10${}^{-6}$ au${}^{-1}$) with the previous perihelion distance below 10 au for 97 per cent of VCs (nominal q${}_{prev}$ = 3.77 au). It means that C/2017 K2 has already visited our planetary zone during its previous perihelion passage. Thus, it is almost certainly a dynamically old Oort spike comet.

arXiv commentPrevious version was published as "Dynamical evolution of C/2017 K2 PANSTARRS", Królikowska & Dybczyńsli, 2018, A&A, 615, A170 This version is supplemented by an Addendum (pages 5-6) which contains updated results based on new observations of this comet

References in corpus (4)

• The Gaia mission
• The Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE): Fifth Data Release
• Oort spike comets with large perihelion distances
• Prediscovery Observations and Orbit of Comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS)

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Distant Comet C/2017 K2 and the Cohesion Bottleneck
• Cometary Activity Begins at Kuiper Belt Distances: Evidence from C/2017 K2
• Discovery of Carbon Monoxide in Distant Comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS)
• C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein): the nearly spherical cow of comets
• Cometary Activity Beyond The Planets
• The influence of individual stars on the long-term dynamics of comets C/2014 UN271 and C/2017 K2
• Discovery statistics and the 1/a-distribution of long-period comets detected over the 1801-2017 period
• Comet C/2018 V1 (Machholz-Fujikawa-Iwamoto): dislodged from the Oort Cloud or coming from interstellar space?
• Variations in Volatile-Driven Activity of Comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) Revealed by Long-Term Multi-Wavelength Observations