Olga Harrington Pinto

Abstract Centaurs are transitional objects between primitive trans-Neptunian objects and Jupiter-family comets. Their compositions and activities provide fundamental clues regarding the processes affecting the evolution of and interplay between these small bodies. Here we report observations of centaur 29P/Schwassmann–Wachmann 1 (29P) with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We identified localized jets with heterogeneous compositions driving the outgassing activity.

The physico-chemical conditions in the protosolar nebula varied with distance from the early Sun, which led to the freezing out of volatiles at different distances, and remnants from this early epoch are found in the ices of present-day comets (Mumma & Charnley 2011; Willacy et al. 2015; van Dishoeck & Bergin 2020; Raymond & Morbidelli 2020). Numerical models predict that most comets formed throughout a trans-Neptunian region (Nesvorný et al. 2017; Vokrouhlicky et al.