On the Border: Searching for Cometary Activity Near the Centaur-JFC Transition Line

TL;DR

This study uses deep imaging to identify low-level cometary activity in asteroids near the Jupiter-family comet transition, suggesting many such objects may exhibit faint activity undetected by typical surveys.

Contribution

It provides new evidence of low-level activity in asteroids with specific orbital parameters, expanding understanding of the comet-asteroid transition zone.

Findings

Approximately 19% of observed asteroids showed low-level activity.

The active fraction increases to about 33% within certain heliocentric distances.

Estimated nuclear radii for active asteroids range from 0.5 to 1.8 km.

Abstract

Current wide-field surveys discover ~15 Jupiter-family comets (JFCs) each year, typically identified via visual detection of a dust coma or tail. The same surveys also discover many asteroids that have distant JFC-like orbits, but with no reported activity. We observed asteroids on Jupiter-crossing orbits beyond the depth of typical survey imaging using the 2.5 m Isaac Newton Telescope. We used deep imaging to observe 16 asteroids in this region, plus 7 known comets for comparison. Three asteroids (2011 WM183, (669525) 2012 XO144, and 2020 RX133) showed surface brightness profiles consistent with low-level activity, equating to ~19% of our total sample. We note that 2020 RX133 is a Jupiter Trojan. When we considered the heliocentric distance range of the asteroids at the time they showed activity, this fraction increased to 33% of the targets in the 3.16 \leq Rh \leq 4.56 au region, and therefore it is possible to infer that at least ~30 asteroids with Tj \leq 3.05 and in the 4.05 < a < 5.05 au parameter space may potentially exhibit low-level activity. We also estimated nuclear radii for the three active targets of r_n = 1.8 \pm 0.2 km, r_n \leq 0.8 km, and r_n \leq 0.5 km for (669525) 2012 XO144, 2011 WM183, and 2020 RX133 respectively. The median color index for the observed asteroids is (g-r)_{PS1} = 0.52 \pm 0.13, aligning with those expected for D-type asteroids.