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1.
E. Kührt 《Icarus》1984,60(3):512-521
Assuming a spherical nucleus of water ice with an isothermal surface, temperature profiles are computed for several heliocentric distances of Halley's comet. Sublimation of ice and the temperature dependence of the material properties are taken into account. The resulting strongly nonlinear heat diffusion problem is solved numerically. With some simplifications an analytical solution is derived. The heat conduction causes a “thermal hysteresis” of the surface temperature and a slow increase of the inner temperature. The complete thermal equilibrium is reached, however, only after 100 or more revolutions in the inner solar system. The calculated temperature profiles are used to estimate the thermal stresses in the nucleus. It is shown that thermal stresses can give a plausible explanation for cometary outbursts and splits.  相似文献   

2.
《Planetary and Space Science》1999,47(6-7):855-872
From the current understanding we know that comet nuclei have heterogeneous compositions and complex structures. It is believed that cometary activity is the result of a combination of physical processes in the nucleus, like sublimation and recondensation of volatile ices, dust grains release, phase transition of water ice, depletion of the most volatile components in the outer layers and interior differentiation.The evolution of the comet depends on the sublimation of ices and the release of different gases and dust grains: the formation of a dust crust, the surface erosion and the development of the coma are related to the gas fluxes escaping from the nucleus. New observations, laboratory experiments and numerical simulations suggest that the gas and dust emissions are locally generated, in the so-called active regions. This localized activity is probably superimposed to the global nucleus activity. The differences between active and inactive regions can be attributed to differences in texture and refractory material content of the different areas.In this paper we present the results of numerical models of cometary nucleus evolution, developed in order to understand which are the processes leading to the formation of active and non-active regions on the cometary surface. The used numerical code solves the equations of heat transport and gas diffusion within a porous nucleus composed of different ices—such as water (the dominant constituent), CO2, CO- and of dust grains embedded in the ice matrix.By varying the set of physical parameters describing the initial properties of comet P/Wirtanen, the different behaviour of the icy and dusty areas can be followed.Comet P/Wirtanen is the target of the international ROSETTA mission, the cornerstone ESA mission to a cometary nucleus. The successful design of ROSETTA requires some knowledge of comet status and activity: surface temperatures, amount of active and inactive surface areas, gas production rate and dust flux.  相似文献   

3.
A self-consistent model of the kinetically nonequilibrium near-surface layer of a cometary nucleus is developed on the basis of the gas-kinetic approach. The weight method of direct statistical simulation is used to model numerically the two-dimensional gas outflow from an ice sample subjected to radiative heating. The effective coefficient of water ice sublimation is estimated. Mass transfer in a porous ice and mineral (scattering) nonisothermal medium is investigated by the method of test particles, and the effective gas release is evaluated taking into account the proper rotation of the cometary nucleus for various model parameters. In these calculations, allowance is made for the kinetic character of the flow and volume sublimation and condensation of the volatile constituents of the material of the cometary nucleus.  相似文献   

4.
A longstanding problem in thermophysical modeling of cometary nuclei has been to accurately formulate the boundary conditions at the nucleus/coma interface. A correct treatment of the problem, where the Knudsen layer gas just above the cometary surface (which is not in thermodynamic equilibrium) is modeled in parallel with the nucleus, is extremely time-consuming and has so far been avoided. Instead, simplifying assumptions regarding the coma properties are used, e.g., the surface gas density is assumed equal to zero or set to the local saturation value, and the coma backflux is neglected or given some realistic but approximate value. The resulting inaccuracy regarding the exchange of mass, energy, and momentum between the nucleus and the coma, may introduce significant errors in the calculated nucleus temperature profiles, gas production rates, and momentum transfer efficiencies. In this paper, we present a practical, accurate, and time-efficient tool which makes it possible to consider the nucleus and the innermost coma of a comet (the former assumed to consist of a porous mixture of crystalline water ice and dust) as a coupled, physically consistent system. The tool consists of interpolation tables for the surface gas density and pressure, the recondensing coma backflux, and the cooling energy flux due to diffusely scattered coma molecules. The tables cover a wide range of surface temperatures and sub-surface temperature profiles, and can be used to improve the boundary conditions used in thermophysical models. The interpolation tables have been obtained by calculating the transmission distribution functions of gas emerging from sublimating porous ice/dust mixtures with various temperature profiles, which then are used as source functions in a Direct Simulation Monte Carlo model of inelastic intermolecular collisions in the Knudsen layer.  相似文献   

5.
《Icarus》1986,68(2):266-275
Condensation of ice particles in the vicinity of a cometary nucleus as pointed out by Yamamoto and Ashihara (1985, Astron. Astrophys. 152, L17–L20) is fully studied by solving the hydrodynamic equations for ice particles and H2O gas. Formulation is presented for the hydrodynamics including condensation and sublimation of ice particles, and energy exchange between ice particles and the gas in a dustless comet. It is shown that sublimation of ice particles condensed leads to heating of the ambient gas, resulting in the higher gas temperature than those predicted by the models proposed so far. Compared with the previous calculation carried out under the conditions at the encounter of the spacecraft to Halley's Comet, the present results have revealed that the survival distance of ice particles against sublimation is longer, but that their size, which attains its maximum of 6.4 Å at 51 km from the center of the nucleus, is smaller, resulting in a larger fraction of uncondensed H2O gas. Discussion is given on the physical conditions under which condensation of ice particles can take place in cometary comae.  相似文献   

6.
The thermal evolution of a spherical cometary nucleus (initial radius of 2.5 km), composed initially of very cold amorphous ice and moving in comet Halley's orbit, is simulated numerically for 280 revolutions. It is found that the phase transition from amorphous to crystalline ice constitutes a major internal heat source. The transition does not occur continuously, but in five distinct rounds, during the following revolutions: 1, 7, 40-41, 110-112, and 248-252. Due to the (slow) heating of the amorphous ice between crystallization rounds, the phase transition front advances into the nucleus to progressively greater depths: 36 m on the first round, and then 91 m, 193 m, 381 m, and 605 m respectively. Each round of crystallization starts when when the boundary between amorphous and crystalline ice is brought to approximately 15 m below the surface, as the nucleus radius decreases due to sublimation. At the time of crystallization, the temperature of the transformed ice rises to 180 K. According to experimental studies of gas-laden amorphous ice, a large fraction of the gas trapped in the ice at low temperatures is released. Whereas some of the released gas may find its way out through cracks in the crystalline ice layer, the rest is expected to accumulate in gas pockets that may eventually explode, forming "volcanic calderas." The gas-laden amorphous ice thus exposed may be a major source of gas and dust jets into the coma, such as those observed on comet Halley by the Giotto spacecraft. The activity of new comets and, possibly, cometary outbursts and splits may also be explained in terms of explosive gas release following the transition from amorphous to crystalline ice.  相似文献   

7.
The nature of cometary volatile materials is subject to debate. Theoretical models of cometary nuclei and laboratory studies suggest that these objects could be made of amorphous water ice in addition to other volatile molecules and refractory grains. This water ice structure has the ability to encapsulate the gases of surrounding environment, reflecting the physical and chemical conditions during their deposition. Therefore, the knowledge of the chemical composition of volatile molecules trapped in amorphous water ice provides a tool for probing the formation environment of cometary ice grains. Experimental studies of gas trapping efficiency in amorphous water ice have been previously conducted mostly under kinetic conditions, where dynamic pumping and temperature gradients prevented rigorous calibrations. In this work, we investigated the trapping efficiencies of Ar, CO, CH4, Kr and N2 by depositing water vapor as ice in the presence of trace gases in a volume submerged in liquid nitrogen at 77 K. The gas trapping efficiencies were determined simply by monitoring the pressure difference of the trace gases before and after the deposition of a known amount of water molecules as amorphous ice.Our results show that the trapped gas to water molecule ratio in amorphous ice is controlled primarily by the partial pressure of the gas during water ice deposition, and is independent of the ice deposition rate as well as the gas to water ratio in the vapor phase. The trapping efficiencies of gases decrease in the order of Kr > CH4 > CO > Ar > N2 in accordance with previous studies. Assuming that the water ice structure of comets is at least partially amorphous water ice at the time of their formation, these results suggest that the total pressure and composition of the surrounding environment of amorphous ice formation are significant controlling factors of trace gas concentrations in cometary ice. This further indicates that the evolution of the solar nebula and timing of cometary ice condensation can also be important parameters in linking the volatile contents of comets and their formation process.  相似文献   

8.
The observation of ions created by ionization of cometary gas, either by ground-based observations or byin situmeasurements can give us useful information about the gas production and composition of comets. However, due to the interaction of ions with the magnetized solar wind and their high chemical reactivity, it is not possible to relate measured ion densities (or column densities) directly to the parent gas densities. In order to quantitatively analyze measured ion abundances in cometary comae it is necessary to understand their dynamics and chemistry. We have developed a detailed ion–chemical network of cometary atmospheres. We include production of ions by photo- and electron impact-ionization of a background neutral atmosphere, charge exchange of solar wind ions with cometary atoms/molecules, reactions between ions and molecules, and dissociative recombination of molecular ions with thermal electrons. By combining the ion–chemical network with the three-dimensional plasma flow as computed by a new fully three-dimensional MHD model of cometary plasma environments (Gombosiet al.1996) we are able to compute the density of the major cometary ions everywhere in the coma. The input parameters for our model are the solar wind conditions (density, speed, temperature, magnetic field) and the composition and production rate of the gas. We applied our model to Comet P/Halley in early March 1986, for which the input parameters are reasonably well known. We compare the resulting column density of H2O+with ground-based observations of H2O+from DiSantiet al.(1990). The results of our model are in good agreement with both the spatial distribution and the absolute abundance of H2O+and with their variations with the changing overall water production rate between two days. The results are encouraging that it will be possible to obtain production rates of neutral cometary constituents from observations of their ion products.  相似文献   

9.
The evolution of a comet nucleus is investigated, taking into account the crystallization process by which the gas trapped in the ice is released to flow through the porous ice matrix. The equations of conservation of the energy and of the masses of ice and gas are solved throughout the nucleus, to obtain the evolution of the temperature, gas pressure and density profiles. A spherical nucleus composed of cold, porous amorphous ice, with 10% of CO trapped in it, serves as initial model. Several values of density (porosity) and pore size are considered. For each combination of parameters the model is evolved for 20-30 revolutions in comet P/Halley's orbit. Two aspects of the release of gas upon crystallization are analyzed and discussed: (a) the resulting continuous outward flux with high peaks at the time of crystallization, which is a cyclic process in the low-density models and sporadic in the high-density ones; (b) the internal pressures obtained down to depths of a few tens to approximately 200 m (depending on parameters), that are found to exceed the compressional strength of cometary ice. As a result, both cracking and explosions of the overlying ice layer and ejection of gas and ice/dust grains are expected to follow crystallization. They should appear as outbursts or sudden brightening of the comet. The model of 0.2 g cm-3 density is found to reproduce quite well many of the light-curve and activity characteristics of comet P/Halley.  相似文献   

10.
Until cometary matter can be studied in-situ or cometary samples are brought back to Earth for analysis, theoretical models and laboratory studies remain a crucial tool for revealing the nature of cometary matter. Constraints on the nature of the primordial material available for incorporation into comets and other solar system material comes from analysis of data from space-based and ground-based observatories. The structure of the nuclear ice component, which may have coexisting amorphous/crystalline phases and include clathrates and other trapped guest molecules, strongly influences the cometary outgassing properties. This paper reviews laboratory work on ice and carbon aceous compounds and discusses their significance for cometary chemistry. Special emphasis will be given to studies on the thermal processing of ices and their implications for the structure changes and subsequent release of volatiles. We also describe the preliminary results of a model of nuclear outgassing, and discuss how such model scan be used to infer the chemical structure of the nuclearices. Furthermore, we confront cometary data with the analysis of carbonaceous meteorites. Recent laboratory results on volatile compounds and the macro molecular structure of carbonaceous meteorites allow us to investigate the link of small bodies in the Solar System. Until ROSETTA will land on comet Wirtanen and study directly the nuclear composition, laboratory measurements of ice and refractory analogs will — together with the analysis of meteorites —significantly improve our knowledge on the origin and structure ofcomets.  相似文献   

11.
The study presents the results of numerical simulations of mass-transfer processes in the near-surface layer of the cometary nucleus and in the inner part of the cometary atmosphere, which is formed under the action of solar radiation. The gas-kinetic model of the inner part of the cometary atmosphere surrounding a spherical nucleus (Skorov et al., 2004) is extended to the case of a nonspherical nucleus with axial symmetry. After high-resolution images of comets 19P/Borrelly and Wild 2 have been obtained by Deep Space 1 and Stardust spacecraft, such an extension seems to be vital and important. The nucleus and the inner part of the coma are closely related to each other because of the permanent exchange of energy and mass; therefore, they are modeled consistently. As in the first part of our study, the boundary conditions at the inner boundary of the simulation domain, which are necessary for gas-kinetic simulations, were determined from the self-consistent model of heat and mass transfer in a porous cometary nucleus that was developed earlier by the authors. The model took into account the volumetric character of the radiation absorption in a porous sublimating medium, the kinetic regime of the transport of sublimation products in the pores, and the backward gas fluxes from the coma due to intermolecular collisions. We considered different models of the nucleus structure that determined the effective gas production. Using the direct simulation Monte Carlo method, we computed the two-dimensional gas flow from a heterogeneous nonspherical cometary nucleus. The simulations were performed using the SMILE software. The parallel computer implementation of the software made it possible to calculate the spatial structure of the gas flow for the entire circumnucleus zone.  相似文献   

12.
G. Herman  M. Podolak 《Icarus》1985,61(2):252-266
A one-dimensional simulation of pure water-ice cometary nuclei is presented, and the effect of the nucleus as a heat reservoir is considered. The phase transition from amorphous to crystalline ice is studied for two cases: (1) where the released latent heat goes entirely into heating adjacent layers and (2) where the released latent heat goes entirely into sublimation. For a Halley-like orbit it was found that for case 1 the phase boundary penetrates about 15 m on the first orbit and does not advance until sublimation brings the surface to some 10 m from the phase boundary. For case 2 the phase boundary penetrates about 1 m below the surface and remains at this depth as the surface sublimates. For an orbit like that of Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 the phase boundary penetrates about 50 m initially for case 1 and about 1 m for case 2. There is no further transformation until the entire comet is heated slowly to near the transition temperature, after which the entire nucleus is converted to crystalline ice. For an Encke-type orbit case 1 gives a nearly continuous transition of the entire nucleus to crystalline ice, while for case 2 the initial penetration is about 8 m and remains at this depth relative to the surface as sublimation decreases the cometary radius. Thus the entire comet is converted to crystalline ice just before it is completely dissipated.  相似文献   

13.
14.
《Planetary and Space Science》1999,47(6-7):827-837
A dust environment working group was encouraged by ESA to provide coma dust environment models useful to plan the ROSETTA operations around the nucleus of short period comet 46P/Wirtanen. Among the many parameters describing the dust released from the nucleus surface, special care was devoted to the dust size distribution. Its present uncertainty makes all environment models sensitive, mainly, to which actual size distribution is adopted. In fact, it must be stressed that no other cometary dust parameter can be derived, such as dust loss rate or dust to gas ratio, if the size distribution remains undetermined. This paper will focus, therefore, on the available information on cometary dust size distributions, starting from the in situ measurement cornerstone provided by the GIOTTO-DIDSY results. Available ground-based observations are then reviewed, in order to disentangle the real sensitivity of them to this quantity; the size distribution is always embedded together with other dust parameters, and its influence on the published results is often forgotten.  相似文献   

15.
《Icarus》1987,72(3):535-554
An analytical model has been developed to simulate the chemical differentiation of a homogeneous, initially unmantled cometary nucleus composed of water ice, putative unclathrated CO2 ice, and silicate dust in specified proportions. Selective sublimation of any free CO2 ice present in a new comet should produce a surface layer of water ice and dust overlying the undifferentiated core. This surface layer modifies the temperature of buried CO2 ice and restricts the outflow of gaseous CO2. On each orbit, water sublimation closer to perihelion temporarily reduces the thickness of the water ice and dust layer and liberates dust. Most of the dust is blown off the nucleus, but a small amount of residual dust remains on the surface (cf. H. L. F. Houpis, W. H. Ip, and D. A. Mendis, 1986, Astrophys. J., in press). Our model includes the effects of nucleus rotation, arbitrary orientation of the rotation axis, latitude, heat conduction into the interior of the nucleus, restriction of CO2 gas outflow by the water ice and dust layer, and the use of thermal conductivities for both amorphous and crystalline water ice as appropriate, featuresthat were not included in the Houpis et al. model. The model also accounts for the erosion of the water ice surface, which Houpis et al. appear to have accounted for and which is an important effect. Specifically, we investigate the effects of varying the permeability of the surface water ice layer, the mass fraction of CO2, the orbit and the latitude, using the orbital parameters of Comets Halley and Tempel 2. It is found that CO2 gas production should exceed H2O gas production beyond ∼3 AU, and at 1 AU CO2 gas production should be between 20 to 25% of H2O gas production. The depth of CO2 ice and the variation in the depth of CO2 ice throughout an orbit are affected significantly by the perihelion of the orbit. The effects due to water ice permeability are significant but much less than expected on the basis of flow area. Latitude and CO2 concentration produce relatively small effects. Under all conditions considered here, CO2 ice should always be found within ∼1 m from the surface of comet nuclei if it is present as a free species to begin with. This result is probably generally valid for unmantled portions of most comets and qualitatively simulates the behavior of an abundant, highly volatile component in an H2O/silicate matrix. Comparison of these and similar results with observations could yield information regarding the permeability and chemical composition of cometary material and suggest sampling strategies to minimize fractionation effects. The method is applicable to other nonwater ices.  相似文献   

16.
In papers dealing with evolution of cometary nuclei it is commonly assumed that the coefficients of sublimation s and condensation c of vapour are both equal to one. The experimental investigation of ice samples under simulated cometary-like conditions (Kossacki, K.J., Kömle, N.I., Leliwa-Kopysty ski, J., Kargl, G., 1997. Thermal and structural evolution of cometary subsurface layer: selfconsistent model and experimental verification. Icarus 128, 127–144) suggests, however, that the sublimation flux calculated with the Hertz–Knudsen formula and the above assumption is nearly an order of magnitude too high. This may imply that actual values of s for the ice/dust sample used in these experiments are of the order of 0.1. A similar conclusion can be drawn for c from the results of various experiments concerning growth of ice crystals from the vapour phase and their sublimation (Lamb, D., Scott, W.D., 1972. Linear growth rates of ice crystals grown from the vapor phase. Journal of Crystal Growth 12, 21–31; Beckmann, W., Lacmann, R., 1982. Interface kinetics of growth and evaporation of ice II. Journal of Crystal Growth 58, 433–442; Sei, T., Gonda, T., 1989. The growth mechanism and the habit change of ice crystals growing from the vapour phase. Journal of Crystal Growth 94, 697–707). The exact values of both of these coefficients depend on various parameters such as temperature, concentration of surface impurities and deviation of the vapour pressure from that of the phase equilibrium. In this work the temperature dependence of the sublimation and condensation coefficients is discussed and an appropriate formula is proposed to fit the experimental results. This new formulation is then used to analyse the implications for the thermal conductivity of a porous cometary-like ice and the rate of vapour flux from a cometary nucleus.  相似文献   

17.
In separate projects, the Hubble Space Telescope has been used to assess the nature of 3 unusual objects: Chiron, Pholus and P/Shoemaker-Levy 9. This paper will compare these objects and discuss how the unique capabilities of the HST may be used to address the issue of cometary activity in each. Chiron, which has exhibited obvious cometary characteristics for several years, might have a bound dust coma that is unresolvable from the ground. In an attempt to directly observe this bound coma, we have obtained a series of images of Chiron with the HST Planetary Camera. Inner coma structure out to 0.″2 has been detected. From these observations we infer a low bulk nucleus density for Chiron. Both HST and ground-based images of 5145 Pholus have been obtained to search for evidence of activity. The ground-based data give the most sensitive limits; however, it is shown that the WFPC-2 on HST can give limits 2–3 orders of magnitude more sensitive than conventional ground-based limits. Finally, as part of a collaborative effort, we have been obtaining HST observations of SL9 in order to determine the fragment sizes and to assess their nature (i.e., cometary vs. asteroid). Both ground-based observations from the UH 2.2m telescope on Mauna Kea and HST observations show that the near-nucleus dust is redder than the sun. While FOS spectra did not detect OH emission, the WFPC-2 HST data show that the inner coma remained very circular from July 1993 up until 2 weeks prior to impact, implying continued production of dust.  相似文献   

18.
《Planetary and Space Science》1999,47(8-9):935-949
An analytical model of the innermost gas–dust coma region is proposed. The kinetic Knudsen layer adjacent to the surface of the cometary nucleus, where the initially non-equilibrium velocity distribution function of gas molecules relaxes to Maxwell equilibrium distribution function and, as a result, the macro-characteristics of gas and dust flows vary several-fold, is considered. The gas phase model is based on the equations for mass, momentum and energy flux conservation, and is a natural development of the Anisimov, 1968 and Cercignani, 1981 approaches. The analytical relations between the characteristics of the gas flow on the boundaries of the non-equilibrium layer and the characteristics of the returning gas flow adsorbed by the surface are determined. These values form a consistent basis both for hydrodynamic models of the inner coma and for jet force models. Three particular models are presented: (1) sublimation of a polyatomic one-component gas; (2) sublimation of a two-component polyatomic gas mixture, in both cases from a plane surface; and (3) sublimation of water ice through a porous dust mantle. We conclude that the characteristics of the gas flow emerging from the Knudsen layer over a porous dust mantle is not very sensitive to the structure of the mantle.We also treat the expansion of dust into the coma, concentrating on the interaction between a non-equilibrium gas flow and a test particle. The dynamics of a grain of idealized shape is explored by using several simplifying assumptions for the variation of the drag force. The velocity of a particle at the exterior boundary of the Knudsen layer is thus estimated. Examining various model behaviours of the drag force inside the Knudsen layer, we show that the dust velocity is not sensitive to these variations.  相似文献   

19.
Several organic molecules have now been detected in the coma of Hale–Bopp. These species may either emanate from the nucleus, or, as has been suggested by Bockelée–Morvan et al., could be synthesized in the coma. We have modelled the gas phase chemistry which occurred in the coma of Hale–Bopp, concentrating on the observed organic molecules HCOOH, HCOOCH3, HC3N and CH3CN. We find that gas phase chemical reactions are unable to synthesize the observed abundances of these molecules, so all these species are most probably present in the nuclear ice. We briefly discuss the implications of this result for the connection between cometary and interstellar ices.  相似文献   

20.
We consider the estimates of the main forces acting on dust particles near a cometary nucleus. On the basis of these estimates, the motion of dust particles of different structure and mass is analyzed. We consider the following forces: (1) the cometary nucleus gravity, (2) the solar radiation pressure, and (3) the drag on dust particles by a flow of gas produced in the sublimation of cometary ice. These forces are important for modeling the motion of dust particles relative to the cometary nucleus and may substantially influence the dust transfer over its surface. In the simulations, solid silicate spheres and homogeneous ballistic aggregates are used as model particles. Moreover, we propose a technique to build hierarchic aggregates—a new model of quasi-spherical porous particles. A hierarchic type of aggregates makes it possible to model rather large dust particles, up to a millimeter in size and larger, while no important requirements for computer resources are imposed. We have shown that the properties of such particles differ from those of classical porous ballistic aggregates, which are usually considered in the cometary physics problems, and considering the microscopic structure of particles is of crucial significance for the analysis of the observational data. With the described models, we study the dust dynamics near the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko at an early stage of the Rosetta probe observations when the comet was approximately at 3.2 AU from the Sun. The interrelations between the main forces acting on dust aggregates at difference distances from the nucleus have been obtained. The dependence of the velocity of dust aggregates on their mass has been found. The numerical modeling results and the data of spaceborne observations with the Grain Impact Analyzer and Dust Accumulator (GIADA) and the Cometary Secondary Ion Mass Analyzer (COSIMA) onboard the Rosetta probe are compared at a quantitative level.  相似文献   

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