Dust Environment Model of the Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov
Fulle, M.; Cremonese, G.; Lazzarin, M.; Munaretto, G.; Ochner, P.; Carosati, D.; Guido, E.; Boschin, W.; La Forgia, F.; Capria, M. T.; Cambianica, P.; Migliorini, A.; Bacci, P.; Maestripieri, M.; Bacci, R.; Valvasori, A.; Buzzi, L.; Aletti, A.; Kugel, F.; Bryssinck, E.; Castellano, D.; Facchini, M.; Ligustri, R.; Milani, G.; Perrella, C.; Trabatti, R.; Nicolas, J.; Arlic, G.; Di Rubbo, S.; Mantero, A.
Italy, Spain, Belgium, France
Abstract
2I/Borisov is the first interstellar comet discovered on 2019 August 30, and it soon showed a coma and a dust tail. This study reports the results of images obtained at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo telescope, on La Palma - Canary Islands, in 2019 November and December. The images have been obtained with the R filter in order to apply our dust tail model. The model has been applied to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and compared to the Rosetta dust measurements showing a very good agreement. It has been applied to the comet 2I/Borisov, using almost the same parameters, obtaining a dust environment similar to that of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, suggesting that the activity may be very similar. The dust tail analysis provided a dust-loss rate Qd ≈ 35 kg s-1 in 2019 November and Qd ≈ 30 kg s-1 in 2019 December.