Dust Production Rates in Jupiter-family Comets: A Two Year Study withATLAS Photometry
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Jupiter-family comets (JFCs) exhibit a wide range of activity levels and mass loss over their orbits. We analyzed high-cadence observations of 42 active JFCs with the wide-field Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in 2020–2021. We measured the dust production rates of the JFCs using the Af ρ parameter and its variation as a function of heliocentric distance. There is a tendency for our JFC sample to exhibit a maximum Af ρ after perihelion, with 254P/McNaught and P/2020 WJ5 (Lemmon) having their maximum Af ρ over a year after perihelion. On average, the rate of change of activity postperihelion was shallower than preperihelion. We also estimated the maximum mass-loss rate for 17 of the JFCs in our sample, finding 4P/Faye to be the most active. We present a subset of comets whose measured Af ρ have been interpolated and extrapolated to a common distance of 2 au preperihelion and postperihelion. From these measurements we found no correlation of intrinsic activity with current perihelion distance. For three of the JFCs in our sample, 6P/d’Arrest, 156P/Russell–LINEAR, and 254P/McNaught, there was no visible coma but a constant absolute magnitude, which we attribute to a probable detection of the nucleus. We derived upper limits for the nuclear radii of ≤2.1 ± 0.3 km, ≤2.0 ± 0.2 km, and ≤4.0 ± 0.8 km, respectively. Finally, we found that 4P/Faye, 108P/Ciffreo, 132P/Helin–Roman–Alu 2, 141P/Machholz 2, and 398P/Boattini experienced outbursts between 2020 and 2022.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".