Dust Environment Model of the Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov

Abstract

2I/Borisov is the first interstellar comet discovered on 2019 August 30, and it soon showed a coma and a dust tail. This study reports the results of images obtained at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo telescope, on La Palma - Canary Islands, in 2019 November and December. The images have been obtained with the R filter in order to apply our dust tail model. The model has been applied to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and compared to the Rosetta dust measurements showing a very good agreement. It has been applied to the comet 2I/Borisov, using almost the same parameters, obtaining a dust environment similar to that of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, suggesting that the activity may be very similar. The dust tail analysis provided a dust-loss rate Q<SUB>d</SUB> ≍ 35 kg s<SUP>-1</SUP> in 2019 November and Q<SUB>d</SUB> ≍ 30 kg s<SUP>-1</SUP> in 2019 December.