The distribution of the perihelion distances of short-period comets

Details The distribution of the perihelion distances of short-period comets The distribution of the perihelion distances of short-period comets

Jun 1984

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1984a%26a...135..129f&link_type=abstract

Astronomy and Astrophysics (ISSN 0004-6361), vol. 135, no. 1, June 1984, p. 129-134. Research supported by the Max-Planck-Gesell

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

21

Comets, Orbit Perturbation, Perihelions, Interplanetary Dust, Jupiter (Planet), Sublimation, Comets, Short Period Comets, Distribution, Perihelion, Sublimation, Dynamics, Perturbations, Analysis, Orbits, Velocity, Jupiter, Decay, Interplanetary Dust, Observations

Scientific paper

The influence of physical (sublimation) and dynamical (perturbations by Jupiter) effects on the distribution of the perihelion distances of short-period comets (P less than 20 yr) is analyzed. It is found that the combination of both effects may account for the observed steep decrease of the number of short-period comets with small perihelion distances and explain why no short-period comet has so far been recorded for perihelion distances less than 0.34 AU. On dynamical grounds, the probability for a short-period comet to acquire an orbit of a very small perihelion distance is low. Unlikely high encounter velocities with Jupiter are required for a short-period comet to get very close to the sun. Furthermore, those comets that do reach the sun's neighborhood are subject to a rapid physical decay. These findings might help to explain such properties of the interplanetary dust as the radial dependence of its spatial density and the observation that more beta meteoroids seem to come from heliocentric distances greater than 0.5 AU than from smaller.

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