![]() Most main-belt asteroids are not expected to have much ice, given their location in the warm inner solar system where they are thought to have resided for billions of years.ĭiagram showing the orbit of Comet Read along with the main asteroid belt (shown as a white fuzzy ring at the center of the image) and the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and Comet Halley for comparison, showing how “traditional” comets like Comet Halley spend much more time far from the Sun in the cold outer Solar System than main-belt comets like Comet Read, whose orbits keep them much closer to the Sun and therefore in a much warmer environment all the time. Only dust has ever been detected being ejected by main-belt comets though, despite many attempts to detect escaping gases that should also accompany sublimation-powered cometary activity. Main-belt comets are a rare sub-class of comets that have mostly circular orbits entirely confined to the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but show comet-like behavior-ejecting material that creates a fuzzy appearance and often tails-that astronomers believe is produced by sublimation-or the transition of ice directly to gas-of icy material. Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Henry Hsieh is a co-author on the paper. A recently published Nature paper "Direct detection of water from a main-belt comet with JWST" led by Michael Kelley of the University of Maryland reports the first direct spectroscopic detection of water outgassing from a main-belt comet named Comet Read.
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