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Gas Jet Morphology and the Very Rapidly Increasing Rotation Period of Comet 41P/Tuttle–Giacobini–Kresák

  • Authors: David G. Schleicher, Matthew M. Knight, Nora Eisner, and Audrey Thirouin

2019 The Astronomical Journal 157 108.

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 2.

Sample sets of gas images (OH, CN, C3, and C2; columns left to right) at two representative rotational phases during our late-March run and a single rotational phase during our late-April run (rows top to bottom). The brightest features are shown in yellow. Due to strong underlying continuum in the C3 and C2 filters, only photometric nights were used, and the continuum was subtracted from these filters prior to image enhancement. The scale is again 30,000 km on a side, with the direction to the Sun indicated with an arrow. As usual, based on many other comets, C3 is nearly identical to CN except that it does not extend as far from the nucleus because of its much shorter lifetime, while the C2 features appear broader than those of CN due to having multiple parents and/or grandparents. However, OH is extremely different, both remaining within a quadrant each night and not exhibiting significant rotation during a night but changing its bulk orientation somewhat over several nights.

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