Secular Light Curve of Exocomet 3I/ATLAS, and its Location on a Comet Evolutionary Diagram

TL;DR

This paper constructs the secular light curve of exocomet 3I/ATLAS, revealing potential binary nature and placing it within the Oort Cloud, offering insights into its composition, activity, and evolutionary status.

Contribution

It introduces the SLC-Methodology for exocomet analysis and applies it to 3I/ATLAS, providing new data on its properties and evolutionary context.

Findings

The colors of 3I are consistent with solar system comets.

The SLC shows a photometric anomaly suggesting a possible binary structure.

3I/ATLAS is classified as an Oort Cloud comet from another stellar system.

Abstract

In this work we will create the Secular Light Curve (SLC) of exocomet 3I/ATLAS, using the SLC-Methodology (Ferrin 2010-2023). The SLCs give a throve of new information and allow the comparison of exo-comets with comets of our own solar system. We arrive at the following conclusions: The colors of 3I are consistent and lie inside the area of colors of other comets in our solar system. The SLC of this comet exhibits a photometric anomaly, a region from -120 to -45 days before perihelion that we interpreted as an eclipse, suggesting that 3I might also be a binary. At -45 days, the SLC changes abruptly its slope, reaching a maximum absolute magnitude of mV(1,1,{\alpha}) = 6.8+-0.1. Using reported estimates derived from 97 papers in the arXiv.org depository for the size, dust, H2O, CO2, and CO production rates, we calculate the total mass loss. We use the inverse total mass loss, as a proxy for age. The Mass-Loss Age = 0.16 comet years will be plotted in the horizontal axis of a Comet Evolutionary Diagram (CED) while the number of Remaining Returns defined as RR = r/{\Delta}r = 24, will be plotted in the vertical axis of the CED. 3I/ATLAS exocomet lies among the comets of our Oort comet family. We conclude that 3I is a comet of the Oort Cloud, but from a different stellar system. The Evolutionary Diagram presented in this work shows complexity beyond current understanding