Astronomers’ discovery of activity on a distant Centaur results in new comet designation - PennLive

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A team of astronomers at Northern Arizona University have announced their discovery of a rare active Centaur - only 18 have been discovered since 1927.

A SciTechDaily report said that the team of astronomers, led by doctoral student and Presidential Fellow Colin Chandler in Northern Arizona University’s Astronomy and Planetary Science PhD program, announced their discovery earlier this year, - “activity emanating from Centaur 2014 OG392, a planetary object first found in 2014.”

What is a Centaur?

SciTechDaily describes Centaurs as “minor planets that sometimes have comet-like features, like tails and comae - clouds of dust particles and gas” - despite orbiting between Jupiter and Neptune, where it’s too cold for water to easily transition from a solid to a gas. Centaurs are “believed to have originated in the Kuiper Belt in the outer solar system,” the report said.

Very few Centaurs displaying activity have been discovered, and much about them is not well understood, since they are rare, difficult to see because they’re faint, and “telescope time-intensive,” the report said.

The findings were published by the Northern Arizona University team in a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, “Cometary Activity Discovered on a Distant Centaur: A Nonaqueous Sublimation Mechanism,” the report said. “Chandler is the lead author, working with four NAU co-authors: graduate student Jay Kueny, associate professor Chad Trujillo, professor David Trilling and Ph.D. student William Oldroyd.”

What did the team’s research involve?

To locate archival images of the Centaur, the team developed a database search algorithm. They also developed a follow-up observational campaign, the report said.

“Our paper reports the discovery of activity emanating from Centaur 2014 OG392, based on archival images we uncovered, plus our own new observational evidence acquired with the Dark Energy Camera at the Inter-American Observatory in Cerro Tololo, Chile, the Walter Baade Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile and the Large Monolithic Imager at Lowell Observatory’s Discovery Channel Telescope in Happy Jack, Arizona,” Chandler said.

Chandler added, “We detected a coma as far as 400,000 km from 2014 OG392 and our analysis of sublimation processes and dynamical lifetime suggest carbon dioxide and/or ammonia are the most likely candidates for causing activity on this and other active Centaurs."

Chandler continued, "We developed a novel technique that combines observational measurements, for example, color and dust mass, with modeling efforts to estimate such characteristics as the object’s volatile sublimation and orbital dynamics,” the report quoted.

A “new comet” designation was awarded.

The team’s discovery has resulted in the recent reclassification of the Centaur as a comet, SciTechDaily reported. It will be known as “C/2014 OG392 (PANSTARRS).”

Chandler said, “I’m very excited that the Minor Planet Center awarded a new comet designation befitting the activity we discovered on this unusual object,” SciTechDaily quoted.

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