We report the discovery of cometary activity emanating from Main-belt asteroid 410590 (2008 GB140), a finding facilitated, for the first time, by an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant. The assistant,
We present archival observations of main-belt asteroid (248370) 2005 QN173(also designated 433P) that demonstrate this recently discovered active asteroid (a body with a dynamically asteroidal orbit displaying a tail or coma) has had at least one additional apparition of activity near perihelion during a prior orbit. We discovered evidence of this second activity epoch in an image captured 2016 July 22 with the DECam on the 4 m Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. As of this writing, (248370) 2005 QN173is just the eighth active asteroid demonstrated to undergo recurrent activity near perihelion. Our analyses demonstrate (248370) 2005 QN173is likely a member of the active asteroid subset known as main-belt comets, a group of objects that orbit in the main asteroid belt that exhibit activity that is specifically driven by sublimation. We implement an activity detection technique,
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10360237
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.3847
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Astrophysical Journal Letters
- Volume:
- 922
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2041-8205
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: Article No. L8
- Size(s):
- ["Article No. L8"]
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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