Announcing the Final Examination of Olga Harrington Pinto for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physics
Comets and Centaurs are remnants from the formation of the solar system. These small bodies are usually divided into subgroups based on their orbital dynamical properties, such as main belt, Centaurs, Jupiter family, Oort cloud, and rarely - interstellar. Analyzing the physical properties of their nuclei and amounts of the likely activity drivers CO, CO2 and H2O in their comae can serve as powerful tools for tracing primitive solar system material. This dissertation consists of four research projects that examine these properties in a wide variety of comets and Centaurs.
The first project focuses on observations of main belt comet 176P/LINEAR that were obtained with the Kepler space telescope. Optical lightcurves were used to constrain models of the nucleus’s spin pole axis, shape and activity level. The second project used millimeter-wavelength spectra from the Arizona Radio Observatory Submillimeter Telescope and infrared photometry of Spitzer images to derive production rates of CO and CO2 from the unusual Oort Cloud comet C/2016 R2 (PANSTARRS). The third project is a compendium of CO, CO2, and H2O production rates in more than 25 comets and Centaurs that were obtained with a variety of space-based and ground-based telescopes and which were analyzed to test models of comet formation and evolution. The fourth project describes the JWST NIRSpec observations, analysis and results leading to the first CO2 detection in a Centaur (39P/Oterma) as well as CO and H2O upper limits.
Committee in Charge: Dr. Maria Womack, Dr. Yanga Fernandez, Dr. Adrienne Dove, Dr. James Bauer
Meeting link can be obtained by request to the committee chair Maria Womack or the student.
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