Monitoring of the activity and composition of comets 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak and 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova

Abstract

We report on photometry and imaging of the Jupiter Family Comets 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak and 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova with the TRAPPIST-North telescope. We observed 41P on 34 nights from February 16, 2017 to July 27, 2017 pre- and post-perihelion (r${}_h$=1.04 au), while we collected data for comet 45P from February 10 to March 30 after perihelion (r${}_h$=0.53 au). We computed the production rates of the daughter species OH, NH, CN, C${}_3$ and C${}_2$ and we measured the dust proxy, Af$\rho$, for both comets. The peak of water production rate of 41P was (3.46$\pm$0.20)$\times$10${}^{27}$ molecules/s on April 3, 2017 when the comet was at 1.05 au from the Sun. We have shown that the activity of 41P is decreasing by about 30% to 40% from one apparition to the next. We measured a mean water production rate for 45P of (1.43$\pm$0.62)$\times$10${}^{27}$ molecules/s during a month after perihelion. Our results show that these Jupiter Family Comets had low gas and dust activity and no outburst was detected. Relative abundances, expressed as ratios of production rates and Af$\rho$ parameter with respect to OH and to CN, were compared to those measured in other comets. We found that 41P and 45P have a typical composition in term of carbon bearing species. The study of coma features exhibited by the CN gas species allowed the measurement of the rotation period of 41P, showing a surprisingly large increase of the rotation period from (30$\pm$5) hrs at the end of March to (50$\pm$10) hrs at the end of April, 2017 in agreement with recent observations by other teams.

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