The location of Asteroidal Belt Comets (ABCs), in a comet's evolutionary diagram: The Lazarus Comets
There is a group of newly recognized asteroids in the main belt that are exhibiting cometary characteristics. We will call them Asteroidal Belt Comets or ABCs for short. The surprising property of these objects is that their orbits are entirely asteroidal while their behaviour is entirely cometary, with Tisserand invariants larger than 3.0, while all Jupiter family comets have Tisserand invariants smaller than 3.0. An analysis of their orbital and physical properties has resulted in the following conclusion. (1) We define the ‘detached group (DG)’ as those objects that exhibit cometary characteristics (sublimating water) and have aphelion distances Q < 4.5 au. The DG contains all the ABCs traditionally recognized, plus a few other members not traditionally recognized like 2P and 107P. With the above definition there are 11 members of the ABC group: 2P, 107P, 133P, 176P, 233P, 238P, C/2008 R1, C/2010 R2, 2011 CR42, 3200 and 300163 = 2006 VW139. And there are three members of the collisioned asteroids, CA, P/2010 A2, 596 Scheila and P/2012 F5