Skip to content
Home » Note, Paper: …more than a bit

Note, Paper: …more than a bit

  • by

I covered ApJ, here’s ApJL: …vol. 967, #1, May 20:

Kareta, T. Noonan, J. W. Volk, K. et al. Jupiter Co-Orbital Comet P/2023 V6 (PANSTARRS): Orbital… L5 ad3dea
Gomez Barrientos, J. de Kleer, K. Ehlmann, B. L. et al. Detection of a 2.85 um Feature on Five Spi… L11 ad4647

Kareta et al. study the unusual comet PANSTARRS (the Jovian one): we are slowly and recently grasping that the Jovian gravity well results in weird bodies, including the Hilda/Cybele group objects, Jupiter Trojans, and the outer Main Belt in general. These weird bodies are variously at or near the snow line (the radius in the Solar System where water condenses to ice, because it’s far enough and cold enough)… and have thus condensed ice. The question of whether the Trojans are actually inactive comets- or whether this entire region of the Solar System is, to greater or lesser degree, comets- is still open. Dynamical considerations, checked by observing field cases, is our best path forward, unless we plan on building and flying Lucy 2, 3, … out to Lucy 2000 or 3000.

The Gomez et al. paper studies objects with JWST. If ever there was a gift to Solar System science, it is time awarded on JWST. Originally intended for cosmology (and hence redshifted stars/galaxies), the redshift so happens to cover various minerals and volatiles present at or beyond Earth. I covered olivine, a common (yet not ubiquitous) mineral on asteroids (and yes, comets, per Stardust samples). Pyroxene, for similar reasons, is a marker mineral; both are well-covered by JWST’s sensitivity range. We also have water, detected by JW in asteroids (…such as Main Belt objects, as I mentioned above!) and the spectrally-close organics, ammonium, and ammoniated organics. Gomez et al. are, with JW’s high sensitivity, adding spinel and possibly spinel-adjacent spectra to the list of minerals.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *