Search for dormant comets in AcuA

  • Published : 2013.04.11

Abstract

It is considered that comets near the ecliptic plane have been injected into inner solar system from Kuiper-belt. Some of them are still active while others are dormant with no detectable tails and comae. These dormant comets have eccentric and/or inclined orbits, which are parameterized by Tisserand parameter TJ<3. In addition, dormant comets can be differentiated from asteroids based on the albedo, because they have low albedo (the geometrical albedos pv<0.1). The conditions of TJ<3 and pv<0.1 have been used as a criteria to discriminate dormant comets from asteroids. However, we must be more careful because there are 'contaminations' from the outer region, i.e. Jovian Trojans (5.05

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