Program: GN-2016A-FT-12

Small primitive bodies were witness to the solar system’s formative processes. A new class of small inactive and weakly active bodies on long-period comet orbits may be the key to distinguishing between models of solar system formation. One of the Manxes has been observed to have surface materials consistent with inner solar system S-type asteroids. Many dynamical models make predictions about the amount of inner solar system material that could reside in the Oort cloud as a result of scattering bu the giant planets, and these predictions radically differ depending on the initial mass of the asteroid population that these models assume/imply. Assessing the fraction of S-type surfaces exist in the Manx population will be a strong test of these models. A new Manx comet, C/2016 A5 has just been discovered (January), and we propose to use GMOS N to obtain griz photometry of the surface and to search for low-level activity. We have 2 hours of time on UKIRT that we will use to get Y-band photometry.