The comet 17P/Holmes 2007 outburst: the early motion of the outburst material
M. Montalto (1), A. Riffeser (2), U. Hopp (1, 2), S. Wilke (2), G., Carraro (3) ((1) MPE, Munchen, Germany, (2) Universitats-Sternwarte Munchen,, Germany, (3) ESO Santiago)

TL;DR
This study analyzed the early outburst of comet 17P/Holmes in 2007, revealing the dynamics, structure, and mass ejection, supporting an internal instability explosion rather than an impact origin.
Contribution
It provides detailed kinematic and mass estimates of the outburst material, offering new insights into the physical processes behind the comet's explosive event.
Findings
Relative velocity of cores: 0.135 km/sec
Dust cloud expansion velocity: 0.200 km/sec
Estimated ejected mass: 10^{-2} to 1 comet mass
Abstract
Context. On October 24, 2007 the periodic comet 17P/Holmes underwent an astonishing outburst that increased its apparent total brightness from magnitude V\sim17 up to V\sim2.5 in roughly two days. We report on Wendelstein 0.8 m telescope (WST) photometric observations of the early evolution stages of the outburst. Aims. We studied the evolution of the structure morphology, its kinematic, and estimated the ejected dust mass. Methods. We analized 126 images in the BVRI photometric bands spread between 26/10/2007 and 20/11/2007. The bright comet core appeared well separated from that one of a quickly expanding dust cloud in all the data, and the bulk of the latter was contained in the field of view of our instrument. The ejected dust mass was derived on the base of differential photometry on background stars occulted by the moving cloud. Results. The two cores were moving apart from each…
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