A Manx comet is a class of rocky minor celestial bodies that have a long-period comet orbit. Unlike most bodies on a long-period comet orbit which typically sport long, bright tails, a Manx comet is tailless, more typical of an inner Solar System asteroid.[1] The nickname comes from the Manx breed of tailless cat. Examples include C/2013 P2 (PANSTARRS), discovered on 4 August 2013,[2] which has an orbital period greater than 51 million years,[3] and C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS), discovered on 22 September 2014, which is thought to originate from the Oort cloud and could help explain the formation of the Solar System.[4][5]
References
edit- ^ "Orbit like a comet, rocky like an asteroid". earthsky.org. 3 May 2016.
- ^ Meech, Karen (November 2014). "C/2013 P2 Pan STARRS - The Manx Comet". AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts #46. 46: 200.02. Bibcode:2014DPS....4620002M.
- ^ "First Observations of the Surfaces of Objects from the Oort Cloud". Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii at Manoa. 10 November 2014.
- ^ Meech, Karen (29 April 2016). "Inner solar system material discovered in the Oort cloud". Science Advances. 2 (4): e1600038. Bibcode:2016SciA....2E0038M. doi:10.1126/sciadv.1600038. PMC 4928888. PMID 27386512.
- ^ "Comet with Stunted Tail Hints at How Solar System Formed". Astrobiology at NASA. 23 May 2016. Archived from the original on April 27, 2017. Retrieved 23 January 2019.
External links
edit- JPL Small-Body Database Browser: C/2013 P2 (PANSTARRS)
- JPL Small-Body Database Browser: C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS)
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