Observations of Disintegrating Long-period Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS): A Sibling of C/1844 Y1 (Great Comet)

Abstract

We present a study of C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) using Sloan gri observations from 2020 mid-January to early April. During this time span, the comet brightened with a growth in the effective cross-section of m 2 s −1 from the beginning to ∼70 days preperihelion in late 2020 March, followed by a brightness fade and the comet gradually losing the central condensation. Meanwhile, the comet became progressively bluer, and was even bluer than the Sun ( g  −  r  ≈ 0.2) when the brightness peaked, likely due to activation of subterranean fresh volatiles exposed to sunlight. With the tailward bias-corrected astrometry we found an enormous radial nongravitational parameter, au day −2 in the heliocentric motion of the comet. Taking all of these findings into consideration, we conclude that the comet has disintegrated since 2020 mid-March. By no means was the split new to the comet, as we quantified that the comet had undergone another split event around last perihelion ∼5 kyr ago, during which its sibling C/1844 Y1 (Great Comet) was produced, with the in-plane component of the separation velocity ≳1 m s −1 . We constrained that the nucleus of C/2019 Y4 before disintegration was ≳60 m in radius, and has been protractedly ejecting dust grains of ∼10–40   μ m (assuming a dust bulk density of 0.5 g cm −3 ) with an ejection speed of ∼30 m s −1 in early 2020 March and increased to ∼80 m s −1 toward the end of the month for grains of ∼10   μ m.