Two apparent outbursts of comet 44P/Reinmuth 2
ATel #15722; Michael S. P. Kelley (University of Maryland), on behalf of the Zwicky Transient Facility Collaboration, and the LCO Outbursting Objects Key Project
on 26 Oct 2022; 03:49 UT
Credential Certification: Kumar Venkataramani (kumarv@caltech.edu)
We report two apparent outbursts of comet 44P/Reinmuth 2, identified in Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF; Bellm et al. 2019, PASP 131, a8002) images of the comet. Photometry measured in 5 arcsec radius apertures (PS1 photometric system) show two discontinuities in the comet's apparent magnitude, followed by a decay back to a nominal brightening trend. The first discontinuity occurred between 2022 Sep 22.38 and Sep 24.44 UTC, from i=17.68+/-0.03 to 17.24+/-0.03 mag. The second discontinuity occurred between Oct 22.37 and Oct 24.35 UTC, from r=17.60+/-0.02 to 16.98+/-0.02 mag. Both events are confirmed by inspection of the comet's morphology processed with temporal filtering. The second event is additionally confirmed in follow-up observations with a 1-m Las Cumbres Observatory telescope at McDonald Observatory, Texas, r=17.10+/-0.02 mag. Accounting for a nominal brightening trend of -0.011 mag/day, the apparent outbursts had strengths of -0.42+/-0.04 and -0.60+/-0.03 mag within our photometric apertures.
Based on observations obtained with the Samuel Oschin Telescope 48-inch Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Zwicky Transient Facility project. ZTF is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AST-2034437 and a collaboration including Caltech, IPAC, Weizmann Institute for Science, Oskar Klein Center at Stockholm University, University of Maryland, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron and Humboldt University, TANGO Consortium of Taiwan, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Trinity College Dublin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, and IN2P3, France. Operations are conducted by COO, IPAC, and UW.
This work makes use of observations from the Las Cumbres Observatory global telescope network.
