Cometary dust activity as a proxy for refractory organic material release

@misc{borysenko2026cometary,
  title = {{Cometary dust activity as a proxy for refractory organic material release}},
  author = {Serhii Borysenko},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.00936},
  eprint = {2611.00936},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.00936},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Cometary dust activity as a proxy for refractory organic material release
AU  - Serhii Borysenko
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/11/01
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.00936
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.00936
AB  - Cometary dust is an important reservoir of refractory organic matter and may contribute to the redistribution of carbon-rich material throughout planetary systems. We investigate whether the widely used dust-activity parameter Afρ can serve as a first-order observational proxy for the release of refractory organic material. A sample of 27 active small bodies representing active asteroids, main-belt comets, quasi-Hilda comets, quasi-Trojan objects, Jupiter-family comets, Centaurs, and long-period comets was compiled from published photometric studies. Representative near-perihelion, phase-corrected A(0)fρ values span more than three orders of magnitude, from a few centimetres for weakly active asteroids and main-belt comets to ∼ 10^4 cm for the most active long-period comets. The large dispersion within individual dynamical classes shows that orbital classification alone does not determine the level of dust activity. Direct compositional measurements of cometary dust, including the high refractory-organic fraction measured for 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, support the interpretation of dust activity as an indirect indicator of potential organic-material release. However, a universal conversion of Afρ into dust mass-loss rate is not possible because of uncertainties in grain-size distribution, density, porosity, velocity, and optical properties. We therefore suggest that Afρ may be used as a comparative, first-order proxy for refractory-organic material release.
ER  -