32P/Comas Solà

Observational history

The comet was discovered on 4 November 1926, by Josep Comas Solà. As part of his work on asteroids for the Fabra Observatory (Barcelona), he was taking photographs with a 6 in telescope. At the time, its position was located within the constellation Cetus. The comet's past orbital evolution became a point of interest as several astronomers suggested early on that the comet might be a return of the then lost periodic comet 113P/Spitaler. In 1935, additional positions had been obtained, and P. Ramensky investigated the orbital motion back to 1911. He noted the comet passed very close to Jupiter during May 1912 and that, prior to this approach, the comet had a perihelion distance of 2.15 AU and an orbital period of 9.43 years. The identity with Comet Spitaler was thus disproven.

In 1933, the Danish astronomer Julie Vinter Hansen undertook significant new research which calculated the orbit of the comet up to 1980, predicting when it would return to the Earth's orbit.

While searching for 32P/Comas Solà in 1969, two Soviet astronomers Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko accidentally discovered a new comet in photographic plates they took, which is now known as 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

Physical characteristics

Nucleus size

In 1985, precession models of the comet's nucleus derived an equatorial radius somewhere between 0.99 –. CCD photometry of the comet taken while it was 3.1 AU from the Sun in 1999 obtained a larger upper limit about 3.2 km. Further studies in 2006 revised the size estimate to be about 2.52 km.

Rotation period

Initial estimates of the rotation period indicated that the comet spins around its axis once every 1.5 to 2.3 days. However, based on the 1999 estimate of the size of its nucleus, forced precession models obtained in 2001 indicated a shorter rotation period of around 7.3 hours.

Notes

References

| access-date= 2010-02-26 }}

| doi-access= free }}

| access-date= 2014-10-29 }}

| doi-access= free }}