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1.
X-radiation may result from active plasma phenomena in the interactions of comets with the solar wind. We have carried out a limited but sensitive search for soft X-radiation from Comet Bradfield (1979l), on 1980 Feb. 5. No X-radiation was detected at a level (3σ) of 1.7 × 10?13 erg(cm2sec keV)?1 in the 0.2 – 4.0 kev range. This corresponds to a limit on the power dissipated in the comet by non-thermal electrons of approximately 1019 ergs sec?1, averaged over the 2568-sec exposure to the comet. This energy deposition is near the magnitude suggested by simple theoretical ideas, and further searches of appropriate comets both in soft X-radiation and at radio wavelengths seem warranted.  相似文献   

2.
Colliding comets in the Solar System may be an important source of gamma ray bursts. The spherical gamma ray comet cloud required by the results of the Venera Satellites (Mazets and Golenetskii, 1987) and the BATSE detector on the Compton Satellite (Meeganet al., 1992a, b) is neither the Oort Cloud nor the Kuiper Belt. To satisfy observations ofN(>P max) vsP max for the maximum gamma ray fluxes,P max > 10–5 erg cm–2 s–1 (about 30 bursts yr–1), the comet density,n, should increase asn a 1 from about 40 to 100 AU wherea is the comet heliocentric distance. The turnover above 100 AU requiresn a –1/2 to 200 AU to fit the Venera results andn a 1/4 to 400 AU to fit the BATSE data. Then the masses of comets in the 3 regions are from: 40–100 AU, about 9 earth masses,m E; 100–200 AU about 25m E; and 100–400 AU, about 900m E. The flux of 10–5 erg cm–2 s–1 corresponds to a luminosity at 100 AU of 3 × 1026 erg s–1. Two colliding spherical comets at a distance of 100 AU, each with nucleus of radiusR of 5 km, density of 0.5 g cm–3 and Keplerian velocity 3 km s–1 have a combined kinetic energy of 3 × 1028 erg, a factor of about 100 greater than required by the burst maximum fluxes that last for one second. Betatron acceleration in the compressed magnetic fields between the colliding comets could accelerate electrons to energies sufficient to produce the observed high energy gamma rays. Many of the additional observed features of gamma ray bursts can be explained by the solar comet collision source.  相似文献   

3.
Photodissociation lifetime of 32s2in comets is calculated by absorption of solar photons into the B3 state and velocity distributions of sulphur atoms are determined. Absorption of solar photons of wavelength ~ 280 nm leads to a photodissociation lifetime of about 250 s for 32S2 molecule in comets when sun-comet distance is 1 AU. Forbidden lines corresponding to 1D-3P transitions of neutral sulphur atom may be detectable at about 11 306 and 10 821 Å in comets. The production rate of 32S2 dimer in comet IRAS-Araki-Alcock 1983d compares well with the production rate of CS, observed in comet Bradfield, when compared at the same heliocentric distance. The chemistry of 32S2 dimer formation in the inner coma of a comet is discussed in the framework of some gas phase reactions.Work partially supported by the CNPq, Brasilia, Brasil under contract No. 30.4076/77.  相似文献   

4.
Zdenek Sekanina 《Icarus》1976,27(1):123-133
A theory of the probability of encounter of the Sun with an interstellar comet at a distance comparable to the Earth-Sun distance is formulated, and a general expression is derived establishing the relationship among the influx rate of interstellar comets, the perihelion distance, the space density of the comets, the Maxwellian distribution of comet velocities in the interstellar cloud, and the cloud's systematic velocity relative to the Sun. The fact that no comet with a strongly hyperbolic orbit has so far been observed is used to determine an upper limit of 6 × 10?4 solar masses per cubic parsec (4 × 10?26 gcm?3) for the space density of interstellar comets. The theoretical distribution of semimajor axes of interstellar comets is derived to show that a strong hyperbolic excess must be present in the orbits of a majority of interstellar comets regardless of the dynamical characteristics of the comet cloud, except when the cloud is moving along with the Sun and the distribution of individual velocities has a very low dispersion. This case, however, implies a possibility of capture by the Sun and thus becomes a problem of an Oort-type cloud.  相似文献   

5.
Systematic and uniform sets of photometric and polarimetric observations of comet 1P/Halley have been analyzed. The phase dependence of brightness for comet Halley was obtained at phase angles α ranging from 1.4° ≤ α ≤ 65°. The following parameters were determined: the amplitude of the opposition effect Δm = 0.75m ± 0.06m; the half-width at a half-maximum of intensity HWHM = 6.4° ± 1.6°; the linear phase coefficient β = 0.0045 ± 0.0001 mag/deg for α from 30° ≤ α ≤ 65°; and the phase angle at which a nonlinear increase in brightness starts, α opp ≈ 31°. For the first time, the phase-angle dependence was obtained for the color of the dust of comet Halley: the color index BC-RC systematically decreases with increasing phase angle. Such a phase behavior of the dust color can be caused by the decrease in the mean size of dust particles that occurs when the comet approaches the Sun. For comet Halley, the negative polarization branch is almost symmetric; the minimal value of polarization is P min = −1.54% at a phase angle αmin = 10.5°, and the inversion angle is αinv = 21.7°. A comparative analysis of the phase functions of brightness and polarization has been performed for the cometary dust and atmosphereless bodies. Among the latter are low-albedo asteroids of the P and C types (102 Miriam and 47 Aglaja, respectively), as well as Deimos; high-albedo objects, such as the E-type asteroid 64 Angelina and the icy satellite of Jupiter Europa; and the Moon with its intermediate albedo. The possibility of a weak depression in the negative polarization branch of comets Halley and 47P/Ashbrook-Jackson at phase angles smaller than 2° is discussed.__________Translated from Astronomicheskii Vestnik, Vol. 39, No. 4, 2005, pp. 353–363.Original Russian Text Copyright © 2005 by Rosenbush.  相似文献   

6.
Julio A. Fernández 《Icarus》1985,64(2):308-319
The brightness evolution of short-period comets is discussed in connection with their physical lifetimes. It is shown that changes in the fraction of the free-subliming area of the nuclear surface may be more important than mass decrease in determining brightness variations. The decrease in the activity of short-period comets caused by the buildup of a dust mantle may be interrupted—and partially reversed—by dust blowoffs that leave exposed areas of fresh ices. Short-period comets may thus be subject to random brightness fluctuations that make quite uncertain any derivation of their physical lifetime based on comparisons of their absolute brightness at different apparitions. As an alternate procedure, the numerical integration of the whole sample of short-period comet orbits carried out by A. Carusi, L.Kresák, E. Perozzi and G. B. Valsecchi (1984, Long-Term Evolution of Short-Period Comets. Istituto Astrofisica Spaziale Internal Report 12, Rome) is used to draw conclusions about the transfer rate of their perihelia from Jupiter's region to the region of the terrestrial planets (heliocentric distances<1.5 AU). It is found that about one short-period comet per century reaches the region of the terrestrial planets. From this result and under the assumption of a steady-state comet population, an average lifetime of the order of 6 × 103 years (~103 revolutions) is derived for a typical kilometer-sized short-period comet of perihelion distance q ~ 1 AU. Such a rather long comet lifetime, as compared to some previous derivations, is consistent with the survival of some periodic comets on small-q orbits of long dynamical time scales.  相似文献   

7.
Owens  Alan  Oosterbroek  T.  Orr  A.  Parmar  A. N.  Schulz  R.  Tozzi  G.P. 《Earth, Moon, and Planets》1997,77(3):293-298
We report the detection of soft X-rays from comet C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) by the Low Energy Concentrator Spectrometer (LECS) on-board the X-ray satellite, BeppoSAX. The observations took place on 1996 September 10–11 approximately 1 day after a large dust outburst (Schulz et al., 1997–1999). After correcting for the comets motion, a 7σ enhancement was found centered (2.1 ± 1.3) x 105 km from the position of the nucleus, in the general solar direction. The total X-ray luminosity in the 0.1–2.0 keV energy band is 5 x 1016 erg s−1 which is at least a factor of ∼ 3 greater than measured by the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE)4 days later and suggests that the bulk of the emission measured by the LECS is related to the dust outburst. The extracted LECS spectrum is well fit by a thermal bremsstrahlung-like distribution of temperature of 0.29 ± 0.06 keV - consistent with that observed in other comets. We find no evidence for fluorescent carbon or oxygen emission and place 95% confidence limits of 1.0 x 1015 and 7.8 x 1015 erg s−1 to narrow line emission at 0.28 and 0.53 keV, respectively. We calculate that if such lines are present, they constitute at most 18% of the 0.1–2.0 keV continuum luminosity. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.  相似文献   

8.
We present an analysis of the results of photometric investigations of two distant comets, C/2002 VQ94 (LINEAR) and 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann-1, obtained with the 6-m telescope of the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The comets under study demonstrate sufficient activity out of the zone of water ice sublimation (at heliocentric distances longer than 5 AU). In the spectra of the investigated comets, we found the CO+ and N2+ emission. The presence of this emission may say that the comets were formed in the outer parts of the Solar System, in a protoplanetary cloud at a temperature ≤25 K. We found that the photometric maximum of the ionosphere (in the CO+ filter) of the comet C/2002 VQ94 (LINEAR) is shifted relative to the photometric center of the dust coma by 1.4″ (7.44 × 103 km) in the direction deflected by 63° from the direction to the Sun. Using special filters to process the images, we picked out active structures (jets) in the dust coma of the 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann-1 comet.  相似文献   

9.
Comet McNaught-Hartley was observed in five 1-h exposures on January 8-14 2001 using the advanced CCD imaging spectrometer on board the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The X-ray image of the comet does not show a crescent-like shape. The brightest region is offset from the nucleus between the sunward and comet velocity directions. The comet mean X-ray luminosity is equal to 7.8×1015 erg s−1 for photon energy E>150 eV and aperture ρ=1.5×105 km where the comet X-ray brightness exceeds 20% of the peak value. Gas production rate was 1029 s−1 during the observations, and the efficiency of X-ray excitation was equal to 4×10−14 erg AU3/2. Day-to-day variations in X-rays reached a factor of 5. The strongest short-term variation was by a factor of 1.75 for 1600 s. This variation may be explained by a decline in the solar-wind flux by the same factor in ≈800 s. The comet and Earth were seeing different faces of the Sun, and time delay in the solar-wind events on the Earth and the comet was long, equal to 6 days. The best correlation between the comet X-ray luminosity and the solar-wind proton density is for the time delay of 5.5 days and may be explained by the higher velocity of heavy ions.Careful background subtraction made it possible to extract the comet spectrum from 150 to 1000 eV. No signal was detected at E>1000 eV, and a 3σ upper limit to any emission with E>1000 eV is 0.3% of the photon emission at 150-1000 eV. The best χ2-fit model to the spectrum consists of nine narrow emission features. The emission energies and intensities are in good agreement with a charge exchange spectrum calculated by us for the slow solar wind. Using this spectrum, we identify the observed emissions as (Ne7++Mg7++Mg8+) at 195 eV, (Mg8++Mg9++Si8+) at 250 eV, C5+ at 370 and 460 eV, O6+ at 560 eV, O7+ at 650, 780, and 840 eV, and Ne8+ at 940 eV. X-ray spectroscopy of comets may be used to diagnose the solar-wind composition and its interaction with comets.  相似文献   

10.
Observations of comets show that they were formed at extremely low temperatures and probably contain amorphous ices that give off exothermal energy on mild heating. The slow rotation period of 5d.0 for the large comet P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 suggests that it was formed in a gravitationally undisturbed region of space. Many smaller typical comets appear to be rotating rapidly, indicating that encounters among them were frequent during formation. As a consequence, the product of the relaxation time for encounters and the mean space density near the end of comet formation was approximately 2×102 g s cm–3. A time scale of 106 yr for comet accumulation is suggested. Laboratory studies by Patashnick and Rupprecht support the probably amorphous nature of the ices. The evidence mildly favors Cameron's 1977 theory of the primitive accretion disk.Interstellar grains grown to large sizes in extremely cool clouds might pop on mild heating by supernovae or luminous young stars to increase the local opacity and scattering.Some probable and possible contribution of comets to the solar system are summarized.  相似文献   

11.
The assumption that the very low albedo determined for Halley's comet is typical of all short period comets, taken together with the assumption that the average sizes of long and short period comets are approximately equal, leads to an increase in the total mass of comets in the solar system by almost two orders of magnitude. If gravitational ejection from the Uranus - Neptune zone during the later phases of planet formation is indeed responsible for the classical Oort cloud between 104–1015 AU, then the mass of comets in this transplanetary region during cosmogonie times has to exceed the combined masses of Uranus and Neptune by over an order of magnitude. Furthermore, if the recent arguments for as many as 1014 comets in an inner Oort cloud between ~40– 104AU are valid, then the total mass of comets in the solar system approaches 2% of a solar mass.  相似文献   

12.
Comet 81P/Wild 2 was observed in the thermal infrared over 6 months during its 1997 perihelion passage. The comet was most active in late February, about 3 months preperihelion; dust production declined by a factor of 3 between February and August. For the GIOTTO Halley dust size distribution, maximum dust production rate was ∼2 × 106 g/s. The comet displayed a 10-μm silicate feature about 25% above the continuum, similar to several other Jupiter-family comets, but much lower than that seen in a number of Oort cloud comets.NASA’s STARDUST sample return mission will encounter P/Wild 2 98 days postperihelion in January 2004. Based on our observations at a similar point in the orbit and the Halley size distribution, we predict that the mass fluence on the spacecraft for a 150 km miss distance will be about 8 × 10−6 g/cm2 for particles up to 1 cm in radius. The corresponding areal coverage will be about 10−4.  相似文献   

13.
Maximum possible acceleration due to out-gassing from cometary nuclei is calculated for H2O and CO(N2) molecules. It is found that the maximum excess velocity at great distance is 0.18 km s–1 so that excess velocities less than this value are compatible with the non-gravitational acceleration due to non-symmetric out-gassing. On the other hand, Comet 1975q and comet 1955V have excess velocities 0.81 and 0.80 km s–1 respectively. These comets may be regarded as the candidates for possible interstellar comets.  相似文献   

14.
We systematically surveyed the orbits of short-period (SP) comets that show a large change of perihelion distance (q) between 1–2 AU (visible comets) and 4–5 AU (invisible comets) during 4400 years. The data are taken from Cosmo-DICE (Nakamura and Yoshikawa 1991a), which is a long-term orbital evolution project for SP comets. Recognizing that q is the most critical element for observability of comets, an invisibility factor (f), defined as the ratio of unobservable time span to observable span during 4400 years, is calculated for each of the large-q-change comets. A detection limit for each comet is obtained from the heliocentric distance at discovery and/or the absolute magnitude at recent apparitions. A mean f value for 35 SP comets with 2.9 J (J is the Tisserand's invariant) is found to be 19.8. This implies that for each visible SP comet of this J-range, at every epoch of time, there exist about 20 invisible comets near the capture orbits by Jupiter, under the assumptions of steady-state flux and ergodicity for the SP-comet population.  相似文献   

15.
Julio A. Fernández 《Icarus》1980,42(3):406-421
The orbital evolution of 500 hypothetical comets during 109 years is studied numerically. It is assumed that the birthplace of such comets was the region of Uranus and Neptune from where they were deflected into very elongated orbits by perturbations of these planets. Then, we adopted the following initial orbital elements: perihelion distances between 20 and 30 AU, inclinations to the ecliptic plane smaller than 20°, and semimajor axes from 5 × 103 to 5 × 104 AU. Gravitational perturbations by the four giant planets and by hypothetical stars passing at distances from the Sun smaller than 5 × 105 AU are considered. During the simulation, somewhat more than 50% of the comets were lost from the solar system due to planetary or stellar perturbations. The survivors were removed from the planetary region and left as members of what is generally known as the cometary cloud. At the end of the studied period, the semimajor axes of the surviving comets tend to be concentrated in the interval 2 × 104 < a < 3 × 104 AU. The orbital planes of the comets with initial a ≧ 3 × 104AU acquired a complete randomization while the others still maintain a slight predominance of direct orbits. In addition, comet orbits with final a < 6 × 104AU preserve high eccentricities with an average value greater than 0.8 Most “new” comets from the sample entering the region interior to Jupiter's orbit had already registered earlier passages through the planetary region. By scaling up the rate of paritions of hypothetical new comets with the observed one, the number of members of the cometary cloud is estimated to be about 7 × 1010 and the conclusion is drawn that Uranus and Neptune had to remove a number of comets ten times greater.  相似文献   

16.
S.V.M. Clube  W.M. Napier 《Icarus》1985,62(3):384-388
The observed properties of the long-period comet system, and its periodic disturbance by galactic forces manifesting as terrestrial impact episodes, may be indicative of a comet capture/escape cycle as the Solar System orbits the Galaxy. A mean number density of comets in molecular clouds of ~10?1±1 AU?3 is implied. This is sufficient to deplete metals from the gaseous component of the interstellar medium, as observed, but leads to the problem of how stars are formed nevertheless with solar metal abundances. Formation of comets prior to stars in dense systems of near-zero energy may be indicated, and isotope signatures in cometary particles may be diagnostic of conditions in young spiral arm material.  相似文献   

17.
Hot regions in solar flares produce X-radiation and microwaves by thermal processes. Recent X-ray data make it possible to specify the temperature and emission measure of the soft X-ray source, by using, for instance, a combination of the 1–8 Å (peak response at about 2 keV) and the 0.5–3 Å (peak response at about 5 keV) broad-band photometers. The temperatures and emission measures thus derived satisfactorily explain the radio fluxes, within systematic errors of about a factor of 3. Comparison of 15 events with differing parameters shows that a hot solar flare region has an approximately isothermal temperature distribution. The time evolution of the correlation in a single event shows that the hot material originates in the chromosphere, rather than the corona. The density must lie between 1010 and 2 × 1011 cm–3. For an Importance 1 flare, this implies a stored energy of roughly 2 x 1030-1029 ergs. A refinement of the data will enable us to choose between conductive and radiative cooling models.  相似文献   

18.
We consider a model of the in situ Oort cloud which is isotropic with a random distrihution of perihelia directions and angular momenta. The energy distribution adopted has a continuous range of values appropriate for long-period (>200 yr) comets. Only the tidal torque of the Galaxy is included as a perturbation of comet orbits and it is approximated to be that due to a quasi-steady state distribution of matter with disk-like symmetry. The time evolution of all orbital elements can be analytically obtained for this case. In particular, the change in the perihelion distance per orbit and its dependence on other orbital elements is readily found. We further make the assumption that a comet whose perihelion distance was beyond 15 AU during its last passage through the Solar System would have orbit parameters that are essentially unchanged by planetary perturbations. Conversely, if the prior passage was inside 15 AU we assume that planetary perturbations would have removed the comet from the in situ energy distribution accessible by the galactic tide. Comets which had their perihelia changed from beyond 15 AU to within 5 AU in a single orbit are taken to be observable. We are able to track the evolution of 106 comets as they are made observable by the galactic tidal touque. Detailed results are obtained for the predicted distribution of new (0 < 1/ < 10–4 AU–1) comets. Further, correlations between orbital elements can be studied. We present predictions of observed distributions and compare them with the random in situ results as well as with the actual observed distributions of class I comets. The predictions are in reasonable agreement with actual observations and, in many cases, are significantly different from random when perihelia directions are separated into galactic northern and southern hemispheres. However the well-known asymmetry in the north-south populations of perihelia remains to be explained. Such an asymmetry is consistent with the dominance of tidal torques today if a major stochastic event produced it in the past since tidal torques are unable to cause the migration of perihelia across the latitude barriers ±26°.6 in the disk model.  相似文献   

19.
This study is based primarily on the calculations of comet orbits over ~ 106 years for 160 short-period comets by Harold F. Levison and Martin J. Duncan from which there are calculated “ablation AGES”. There are positive statistical correlations (having many deviations) with radial nongravitational forces, comet activity measures, and dust-to-gas ratios in the spectra, in the sense that comets of greater “AGES” tend to be less active and to show less dust in their spectra than comets of lesser “AGES”.  相似文献   

20.
We present a comparative study on molecular abundances in comets basedon millimetre/submillimetre observations made with the IRAM 30-m,JCMT, CSO and SEST telescopes. This study concerns a sample of 24comets (6 Jupiter-family, 3 Halley-family, 15 long-period) observedfrom 1986 to 2001 and 8 molecular species (HCN, HNC, CH3CN,CH3OH, H2CO, CO, CS, H2S). HCN was detected in all comets,while at least 2 molecules were detected in 19 comets. From the sub-sample of comets for which contemporary H2O productionrates are available, we infer that the HCN abundance relative to water variesfrom 0.08% to 0.25%. With respect to other species, HCN is the moleculewhich exhibits the lowest abundance variation from comet to comet. Therefore,production rates relative to that of HCN can be used for a comparative study ofmolecular abundances in the 19 comets. It is found that: CH3OH/HCN varies from ≤ 9 to 64; CO/HCN varies from ≤ 24 to 180; H2CO/HCN varies between 1.6 and 10; and H2S/HCN varies between 1.5 and 7.6. This study does not show any clear correlation between the relative abundancesand the dynamical origins of the comets, or their dust-to-gas ratios.  相似文献   

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