Reports asymmetric heliocentric activity slopes for 103P/Hartley 2 and exponential outburst decay plus flattening phase curves for Chiron from ATLAS, ZTF, and LCO photometry.
On the Size-Dependence of the Inclination Distribution of the Main Kuiper Belt
1 Pith paper cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.
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Pith paper citing it
abstract
We present a new analysis of the currently available orbital elements for the known Kuiper belt objects. In the non-resonant, main Kuiper belt we find a statistically significant relationship between an object's absolute magnitude (H) and its inclination (i). Objects with H<6.5 (i.e. radii >~170 km for a 4% albedo) have higher inclinations than those with H>6.5 (radii >~ 170 km). We have shown that this relationship is not caused by any obvious observational bias. We argue that the main Kuiper belt consists of the superposition of two distinct distributions. One is dynamically hot with inclinations as large as \~35 deg and absolute magnitudes as bright as 4.5; the other is dynamically cold with i<~5 deg and H>6.5. The dynamically cold population is most likely dynamically primordial. We speculate on the potential causes of this relationship.
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Multi-year Ground-Based Survey Photometry of Active Comet 103P/Hartley 2 and Centaur (2060) Chiron: A Tale of Two Comets in the Pre-LSST Era
Reports asymmetric heliocentric activity slopes for 103P/Hartley 2 and exponential outburst decay plus flattening phase curves for Chiron from ATLAS, ZTF, and LCO photometry.