Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Jul 1996
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996a%26a...311..333f&link_type=abstract
Astronomy and Astrophysics, v.311, p.333-339
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
11
Comets, P/Tempel 2, Infrared: Solar System
Scientific paper
The inverse dust tail model (Fulle 1989) is improved to take into account dust ejection according to the so-called fan effect (Sekanina 1987) and to analyse IR emission images as input data. The improved model is applied to dust tail images of the short period comet P/Tempel 2 obtained by IRAS (Campins et al. 1990). The dust ejection cone axis (i.e. the nucleus spin axis in the fan model) best fitting the input data is characterized by argument {PHI}=60deg and obliquity I=70deg. This direction differs by about 30deg with respect to that found by Sekanina (1987), which gives worse fits of the IRAS images. Intrinsic uncertainties of the fan model or a real nucleus precession may explain such a disagreement. The dust ejection velocity of 1mm sized grains agrees with that required to fit the width of the trail associated to the same comet (Sykes et al. 1986) and varies within the values 12+/-5m/s from the comet activity onset at 2.9AU to two months after perihelion. Its maximum occurs a month before perihelion and its size dependence power index is u>-0.2: both features are not explained by most current dust-gas drag models (a detailed review of these models can be found in Crifo 1991). The mass loss rate increases from 50kg/s at the activity onset to at least 500kg/s at perihelion, so that P/Tempel 2 is a significant source of interplanetary dust. With respect to the results from optical image analyses, this result has the great advantage to be independent of the poorly known albedo of large grains. The dust size spectrum points out a significant trend of the dominant size of the ejected dust, going from millimeters at the activity onset (at 2.9AU from the Sun) to decimeters at perihelion (at 1.3AU from the Sun). It might be related to the expected increasing dust drag efficiency for a decreasing Sun comet distance.
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