Astronomers have discovered a new comet without a tail and have nicknamed it Manx, after a breed of cat that share the same characteristic. Manx is a first-of-its-kind comet that may offer clues about our solar system’s formation and evolution. The research, published Friday in the journal Scientific Advances, found that the comet is made of rocky materials that are normally found near Earth, leading scientists to believe that it may have come from the inner part of our own solar system.
Most comets are made of frozen compounds and ice, and come from far out in the solar system. Scientists think Manx may have formed near Earth around the time of our planet’s formation, and then been ejected far out in the solar system by a sort of gravitational slingshot. Comets coming toward Earth along the same approach as Manx usually grow bright tails as they approach the sun, as a result of vaporizing ice that causes them to gleam with reflected sunlight. This new tailless comet shows very little typical cometary activity.
Manx has a long orbital period of about 860 years, suggesting that its source is in the Oort Cloud. The team thinks it was only recently nudged into an orbit that brings it closer to the Sun. Lead author Karen Meech from the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, said, “We already knew of many asteroids, but they have all been baked by billions of years near the Sun. This one is the first uncooked asteroid we could observe: it has been preserved in the best freezer there is.”
Learning how many more tailless comets like Manx exist could help answer the question of how and when our solar system established its current configuration. Paper co-author Olivier Hainaut, from the European Southern Observatory in Germany, stated, “Depending how many we find, we will know whether the giant planets danced across the solar system when they were young, or if they grew up quietly without moving much.”
Manx was discovered by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) in 2014 and is officially known as C/2014 S3. It was first spotted about twice as far away from the sun as Earth is, dark and practically tailless. Analysis later showed that it contained rocky materials similar to the asteroids found in a belt between Jupiter and Mars. The pristine appearance of Manx indicates that it has been in deep space for a long time.
Photo credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser, artist rendering of C/2014 S3