Spectroscopic identification of water emission from a main-belt comet

Michael S. P. Kelley (), Henry H. Hsieh, Dennis Bodewits, Mohammad Saki, Geronimo L. Villanueva, Stefanie N. Milam and Heidi B. Hammel
Additional contact information
Michael S. P. Kelley: University of Maryland
Henry H. Hsieh: Planetary Science Institute
Dennis Bodewits: Auburn University, Edmund C. Leach Science Center
Mohammad Saki: Auburn University, Edmund C. Leach Science Center
Geronimo L. Villanueva: Solar System Exploration Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 690
Stefanie N. Milam: Solar System Exploration Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 690
Heidi B. Hammel: Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy

Nature, 2023, vol. 619, issue 7971, 720-723

Abstract: Abstract Main-belt comets are small Solar System bodies located in the asteroid belt that repeatedly exhibit comet-like activity (that is, dust comae or tails) during their perihelion passages, strongly indicating ice sublimation1,2. Although the existence of main-belt comets implies the presence of extant water ice in the asteroid belt, no gas has been detected around these objects despite intense scrutiny with the world’s largest telescopes3. Here we present James Webb Space Telescope observations that clearly show that main-belt comet 238P/Read has a coma of water vapour, but lacks a significant CO2 gas coma. Our findings demonstrate that the activity of comet Read is driven by water–ice sublimation, and implies that main-belt comets are fundamentally different from the general cometary population. Whether or not comet Read experienced different formation circumstances or evolutionary history, it is unlikely to be a recent asteroid belt interloper from the outer Solar System. On the basis of these results, main-belt comets appear to represent a sample of volatile material that is currently unrepresented in observations of classical comets and the meteoritic record, making them important for understanding the early Solar System’s volatile inventory and its subsequent evolution.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06152-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:619:y:2023:i:7971:d:10.1038_s41586-023-06152-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06152-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().