Studying the Color, Brightness, and Outbursts of Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks

Abstract

Comets are large objects primarily made up of dust and gas that orbit around the Sun. Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is known for having massive outbursts, which is when a comet becomes drastically brighter. The outbursts can be unpredictable in cause and duration. There are many theories as to why these outbursts happen, but we don’t always know the causes. Through this semester, we studied the mass of the outbursts and the lightcurve of this comet to learn information about the causes of these outbursts. We started with plotting the magnitude of the comet versus the distance of the comet from the Sun. We did this to calculate the scale of the outbursts and other information as well. We found that the data, which was in three different filters, didn't line up. We created a loop using python code that found the offset values in each filter and corrected them. With this information we can learn about the scale of these outbursts as well as do some calculations to figure out how massive these outbursts are. Our next few steps involved a multitude of calculations to find the mass of an outburst on any given day. Through aperture photometry, an astronomical imaging technique, we found the brightness of outbursts on nights of outbursts. We used these numbers to calculate the differential size distribution of the comet, the number of dust grains in the comet’s outbursts, the cross sectional area of the comet, and finally to calculate the mass of the outbursts. The mass of the outburst on July 21st 2023 was found to be 5.18*109 kg. We also compared this qualitatively to other masses to get an idea for just how big this was.