Narrowband Observations of Comet 46P/Wirtanen during Its Exceptional Apparition of 2018/19. I. Apparent Rotation Period and Outbursts

Abstract

Abstract We obtained broad- and narrowband images of the hyperactive comet 46P/Wirtanen on 33 nights during its 2018/2019 apparition, when the comet made a historic close approach to the Earth. With our extensive coverage, we investigated the temporal behavior of the comet on both seasonal and rotational timescales. We used CN observations to explore the coma morphology, revealing that there are two primary active areas that produce spiral structures. The direction of rotation of these structures changes from pre- to postperihelion, indicating that the Earth crossed the comet’s equatorial plane sometime around perihelion. We also used the CN images to create photometric light curves that consistently show two peaks in the activity, confirming the two source regions. We measured the nucleus’s apparent rotation period at a number of epochs using both the morphology and the light curves. These results all show that the rotation period is continuously changing throughout our observation window, increasing from 8.98 hr in early November to 9.14 hr around perihelion and then decreasing again to 8.94 hr in February. Although the geometry changes rapidly around perihelion, the period changes cannot be primarily due to synodic effects. The repetition of structures in the coma, both within a night and from night to night, strongly suggests that the nucleus is in a near-simple rotation state. We also detected two outbursts, one on December 12 and the other on January 28. Using the apparent velocities of the ejecta in these events, 68 ± 5 and 162 ± 15 m s−1, respectively, we derived start times of 2018 December 12 at 00:13 UT ± 7 minutes and 2019 January 27 at 20:01 UT ± 30 minutes.