{"id":3809,"date":"2020-10-28T13:17:52","date_gmt":"2020-10-28T20:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nau.edu\/astronomy-and-planetary-science\/?p=3809"},"modified":"2020-10-30T13:20:14","modified_gmt":"2020-10-30T20:20:14","slug":"nau-astronomers-discover-activity-on-distant-planetary-object-findings-lead-to-reclassification-of-centaur-as-comet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/nau-astronomers-discover-activity-on-distant-planetary-object-findings-lead-to-reclassification-of-centaur-as-comet\/","title":{"rendered":"NAU astronomers discover activity on distant planetary object; findings lead to reclassification of Centaur as comet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-7996\" src=\"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/74\/Comet-600x600.png\" alt=\"Panstarrs digital image\" width=\"377\" height=\"356\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>This new image of C\/2014 OG392 (PANSTARRS) and its extensive coma combines many digital images into a single 7,700 second exposure. The dashed lines are star trails caused by the long exposure. Images captured October 14, 2020 using the Large Monolithic Imager on the 4.3 m Lowell Discovery Telescope.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Centaurs are minor planets believed to have originated in the Kuiper Belt in the outer solar system. They sometimes have comet-like features such as tails and comae\u2014clouds of dust particles and gas\u2014even though they orbit in a region between Jupiter and Neptune where it is too cold for water to readily sublimate, or transition, directly from a solid to a gas.<\/p>\n<p>. . . <\/p>\n<p>A team of astronomers, led by doctoral student and Presidential Fellow <strong>Colin Chandler<\/strong> in Northern Arizona University\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/phd-astronomy-planetary-science\/\">Astronomy and Planetary Science PhD program<\/a>, earlier this year announced their discovery of activity emanating from Centaur 2014 OG392, a planetary object first found in 2014. They published their findings in a paper in <a href=\"https:\/\/ui.adsabs.harvard.edu\/abs\/2020ApJ...892L..38C\/abstract\"><em>The Astrophysical Journal Letters<\/em><\/a>, \u201cCometary Activity Discovered on a Distant Centaur: A Nonaqueous Sublimation Mechanism.\u201d Chandler is the lead author, working with four NAU co-authors, graduate student <strong>Jay Kueny<\/strong>, associate professor <strong>Chad Trujillo<\/strong>, professor <strong>David Trilling<\/strong> and PhD student <strong>William Oldroyd<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>See the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/nau-research\/centaur-as-comet\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This new image of C\/2014 OG392 (PANSTARRS) and its extensive coma combines many digital images into a single 7,700 second exposure. The dashed lines are star trails caused by the long exposure. Images captured October 14, 2020 using the Large Monolithic Imager on the 4.3 m Lowell Discovery Telescope. Centaurs are minor planets believed to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy-and-planetary-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3809"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3813,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809\/revisions\/3813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}