Other
Scientific paper
Apr 1994
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994p%26ss...42..263c&link_type=abstract
Planetary and Space Science, vol. 42, no. 4, p. 263-268
Other
1
Astronomical Models, Comet Tails, Comets, Cosmic Dust, Ejecta, Astronomical Photometry, Mass Flow Rate, Monte Carlo Method, Perihelions, Schmidt Telescopes, Velocity, Visual Photometry
Scientific paper
Two wide-field plates taken with the U.K. Schmidt Telescope Unit of the perspective dust antitail of comet Levy 1990XX are analyzed by means of the inverse Monte-Carlo model of dust tails. The model considers dust grains of diameters between 2 micrometer and 2 cm ejected from 5 months before perihelion to 3 months after. The observation geometry allows a very accurate estimate of the dust ejection velocity for the pre-perihelion times, which results to be 30 +/- 10 m/sec for grains of 0.1 mm diameter and strongly constrains coma models interpreting pre-perihelion observations. At perhelion the velocity increases to about 120 m/sec, and then decreases to pre-perihelion values. The mass loss rate reaches a wide maximum of 3 x 107 gr/sec 10 days before perihelion. Only a negligible fraction (lower than 2%) of the observed produced dust mass (4 +/- 1 x 1014 gr) appears to be injected into bound orbits; however, such an estimate for the meteroid contribution to the zodiacal cloud should be a crude lower limit, since the 1990XX antitail mainly concerns quite small grains. Nevertheless, as for other already analyzed new comets, the time-averaged size distribution is dominated by large grains, with a power index of -3.2 +/- -0.1.
Cremonese Gabriele
Fulle Marco
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