Some works of note in MNRAS Letters for July (vol.541):
Snodgrass, C. Holt, C. E. Kelley, M. S. P. et al. First JWST spectrum of distant activity in long-period comet C/2024E1 (Wierzchos) p. L8 slaf046
Basha, R. D. Klein, Y. Y. Katz, B. Kozai-Lidov cycles=simple pendulum p. L43 slaf050
It’s always good to catch a comet early, when far from the Sun. It’s hard, of course, since they are not just distant, but dim. A lack of warmth results in lack of activity, and thus lack of reflective coma material. Still, we caught Comet Wierzchos anyway, and tracked its rising activity. It was faint, of course, and detecting specific molecules (not just some presence) requires long exposures with sensitive instruments. Instruments like… JWST! With JWST, we can now say something about the comet’s contents.
And now for deep science. On longer and longer timescales, bodies don’t just follow Keplerian orbits, since there are perturbations. The Sun is an imperfect sphere, and thus so is its gravity field. There are also tugs from the planets, large asteroids, solar radiation pressure, Yarkovsky, etc. Individually, they’re all low, but over many, many orbits they add up to something. That something includes the Lidov and the Kozai effects. Basha et al. do the math, and help us grasp the history of small bodies… an imperfect history.