Other
Scientific paper
Sep 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.2003d&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #20.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.516
Other
Scientific paper
The nuclei of three Jupiter family comets (JFCs) have now been observed with sufficient resolution to characterize the morphology of surface features. Comets Borrelly, Tempel 1, and Wild 2 display a plethora of features, yet surprisingly, impact craters have not been unambiguously detected. An examination of these surfaces suggests that topography at large scales (hundreds of meters to kilometers) is muted, while at the same time small-scale topography (tens to a hundred meters) is present with in some cases astonishingly steep local slopes. Calculations demonstrate that viscous relaxation of topography, facilitated by the likely small grain sizes of cometary ice, may operate sufficiently fast to modify the surfaces of JFCs during their brief, terminal sojourns into the inner solar system. (Viscous relaxation may affect the large-scale shapes of these comets as well.) Viscous relaxation works with other process, such as sublimation, to alter the surface. Consequently, the surface geology of these nuclei may no longer reflect cometary formation processes or collisional evolution in the Kuiper Belt. (This research was supported by indirect funds from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.)
Cheng Andrew F.
Dombard Andrew J.
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