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Published Online March 23, 2006
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1125150

Reports

Submitted on January 19, 2006
Accepted on February 27, 2006

A Population of Comets in the Main Asteroid Belt

Henry H. Hsieh 1* and David Jewitt 1

1 Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Henry H. Hsieh , E-mail: hsieh{at}ifa.hawaii.edu

Comets are icy bodies that sublimate and become active when close to the Sun. They are believed to originate in two cold reservoirs beyond the orbit of Neptune: the Kuiper Belt (equilibrium temperatures ~40 K) and the Oort Cloud (~10 K). Here, we present optical data showing the existence of a population of comets originating in a third reservoir: the main asteroid belt. The main-belt comets are unlike the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud comets in that they likely formed where they currently reside and may be collisionally activated. The existence of the main-belt comets lends new support to the idea that main-belt objects could be a major source of terrestrial water.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Comparison of Comet 81P/Wild 2 Dust with Interplanetary Dust from Comets.
H. A. Ishii, J. P. Bradley, Z. R. Dai, M. Chi, A. T. Kearsley, M. J. Burchell, N. D. Browning, and F. Molster (2008)
Science 319, 447-450
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)