Search Publications

A Search for the Far-Infrared Ghost of C/2010 X1 (Elenin) with Herschel

Altieri, Bruno; Müller, Thomas; Kidger, Mark R. +1 more

Observations of Comet C/2010 X1 (Elenin) in August 2011 showed a pattern of evolution of coma morphology into an expanding, amorphous cloud of rapidly decreasing surface brightness shortly before perihelion passage, similar to C/1999 S4 (LINEAR) in 2000. However, the comet's difficult viewing geometry at the time of disruption made it impossible t…