Image Details
Caption: Figure 2.
Observed active ranges for known/suspected MBCs appearing in H. H. Hsieh et al. (2018) plotted with asteroid 6993’s current activity period over true anomaly (left) and heliocentric distance (right). Solid blue boxes are preperihelion, and the outlined blue boxes are postperihelion. Numbers in parentheses to the far right of the left panel indicate the number of confirmed active apparitions that have been observed for each object. (Left) The black vertical line in the left plot shows perihelion. Relative to perihelion passage, the earliest and latest observed activity positions on an MBC (324P) are plotted as the vertical dashed and dotted lines, respectively. (Right) Horizontal black lines are the heliocentric distance range in a single-orbit for each object, with the most distant positions in which activity has been observed on an MBC (324P) preperihelion (dashed line) and postperihelion (dotted line). The discovery presented here means that 6993 has a larger preperihelion activity detection than these known/suspected MBCs. Note that this epoch of activity for 6993 is ongoing and thus incomplete on the plot.
© 2026. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.