Constraining the Dust Coma Properties of Comet C/Siding Spring (2013 A1) at Large Heliocentric Distances

The close encounter of Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) with Mars on October 19, 2014 presented an extremely rare opportunity to obtain the first flyby quality data of the nucleus and inner coma of a dynamically new comet. However, the comets dust tail potentially posed an impact hazard to those spacecraft. To characterize the comet at large heliocentric distances, study its long-term evolution, and provide critical inputs to hazard modeling, we imaged C/Siding Spring with the Hubble Space Telescope when the comet was at 4.58, 3.77, and 3.28 AU from the Sun. The dust production rate, parameterized by the quantity Af$rho$, was 2500, 2100, and 1700 cm (5000-km radius aperture) for the three epochs, respectively. The color of the dust coma is 5.0$pm$0.3$%$/100 nm for the first two epochs, and 9.0$pm$0.3$%$/100 nm for the last epoch, and reddens with increasing cometocentric distance out to ~3000 km from the nucleus. The spatial distribution and the temporal evolution of the dust color are most consistent with the existence of icy grains in the coma. Two jet-like dust features appear in the north-northwest and southeast directions projected in the sky plane. Within each epoch of 1-2 hour duration, no temporal variations were observed for either feature, but the PA of the southeastern feature varied between the three epochs by ~30$^circ$. The dust feature morphology suggests two possible orientations for the rotational pole of the nucleus, (RA, Dec) = (295$^circpm$5$^circ$, +43$^circpm$2$^circ$) and (190$^circpm$10$^circ$, 50$^circpm$5$^circ$), or their diametrically opposite orientations.