The Orbit and Size-Frequency Distribution of Long Period Comets Observed by Pan-STARRS1

Abstract

We introduce a new technique to estimate the comet nuclear size frequency distribution (SFD) that combines a cometary activity model with a survey simulation and apply it to 150 long period comets (LPC) detected by the Pan-STARRS1 near-Earth object survey. The debiased LPC size-frequency distribution is in agreement with previous estimates for large comets with nuclear diameter $>\sim 1$~km but we measure a significant drop in the SFD slope for small objects with diameters $<1$~km and approaching only $100$~m diameter. Large objects have a slope ${\alpha }_{big}=0.72\pm 0.09(stat.)\pm 0.15(sys.)$ while small objects behave as ${\alpha }_{small}=0.07\pm 0.03(stat.)\pm 0.09(sys.)$ where the SFD is $\propto 10^{\alpha H_N}$ and $H_N$ represents the cometary nuclear absolute magnitude. The total number of LPCs that are $>1$~km diameter and have perihelia $q<10$~au is $0.46\pm 0.15\times 10^9$ while there are only $2.4\pm 0.5(stat.)\pm 2(sys.)\times 10^9$ objects with diameters $>100$~m due to the shallow slope of the SFD for diameters $<1$~m. We estimate that the total number of `potentially active' objects with diameters $\ge 1$~km in the Oort cloud, objects that would be defined as LPCs if their perihelia evolved to $<10$~au, is $(1.5\pm 1)\times 10^{12}$ with a combined mass of $1.3\pm 0.9M_{Earth}$. The debiased LPC orbit distribution is broadly in agreement with expectations from contemporary dynamical models but there are discrepancies that could point towards a future ability to disentangle the relative importance of stellar perturbations and galactic tides in producing the LPC population.

accepted for publication in Icarus

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