Comet 72P/Denning-Fujikawa: down but not necessarily out

Details Comet 72P/Denning-Fujikawa: down but not necessarily out Comet 72P/Denning-Fujikawa: down but not necessarily out

Nov 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001mnras.327.1201b&link_type=abstract

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 327, Issue 4, pp. 1201-1207.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

7

Comets: Individual: 72P/Denning-Fujikawa, Meteors, Meteoroids, Minor Planets, Asteroids

Scientific paper

It is argued that Comet 72P/Denning-Fujikawa is an old and intermittently active comet evolving, at least observationally, towards a transitional minor planet status. We have studied the fate of hypothetical meteoroids ejected from the comet during its two known periods of activity (1881 and 1978). A complex history of orbital evolution is found. Meteoroids ejected in 1881 first become Earth-orbit-crossing in 1960, while meteoroids ejected in 1978 appear to hold stable, non-Earth-orbit-crossing orbits until at least 2110. If copious amounts of meteoroids were ejected in 1881 we find some indication that the Earth may encounter a populous, coherent subgroup, or `streamlet', of them in 2009 and 2010, leading to the possibility of outburst activity in those years. We have investigated the possibility that the activity of Comet 72P/Denning-Fujikawa, over the past ~200years, has been governed by impacts suffered by the comet as it moves through the main-belt asteroid region. While encounters with centimetre-sized objects will take place each time the comet orbits the Sun, the likelihood of the comet encountering a large metre-sized asteroid is essentially zero on the time-scales considered. The outburst activity of the comet may be impact-modulated in the sense that small-object impacts might trigger the explosive release of gases trapped in subsurface cavities.

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