Cometary spin-down

Agarwal, Jessica

doi:10.1038/d41586-018-00008-6

NEWS AND VIEWS
10 January 2018

Cometary spin-down

The rotation rate of a comet more than halved in two months — a much greater change than has previously been observed. This suggests that the comet is in a distinct evolutionary state and might soon reorient itself.

Jessica Agarwal⁰

Jessica Agarwal
1. Jessica Agarwal is at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
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Kilometre-sized chunks of ice and dust known as cometary nuclei were left over from the formation of the Solar System¹. The vast majority of these objects orbit the Sun in one of two cometary reservoirs beyond the orbit of Neptune: the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. When an object from one of these reservoirs enters the inner Solar System, it becomes an active comet — its ice is transformed into gas and carries along embedded dust to form a diffuse envelope (coma) and tail. On page 186, Bodewits et al.² report a dramatic decrease in the rotation rate of comet 41P/Tuttle–Giacobini–Kresák (comet 41P) indicating that this object could soon enter a phase of rotational instability and reorientation that has never before been seen in a comet.

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Nature 553, 158-159 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-00008-6

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