From the Oort cloud to observable short-period comets - I. The initial stage of cometary capture

Details From the Oort cloud to observable short-period comets - I. The initial stage of cometary capture From the Oort cloud to observable short-period comets - I. The initial stage of cometary capture

Aug 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001mnras.325.1303r&link_type=abstract

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 325, Issue 4, pp. 1303-1311.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

2

Comets: General, Solar System: General

Scientific paper

We investigate the first stage of the dynamical evolution of Oort cloud comets entering the planetary region for the first time. To this purpose, we integrate numerically the motions of a large number of fictitious comets pertaining to two samples, both with perihelion distances up to 5.7au and random inclinations; the first sample is composed of comets whose orbits have at least one node close to 5.2au, while the second is not subject to this constraint. We examine the orbits when the comets come to aphelion after their first perihelion passage within the planetary region, and find that there is a clear statistical dependence of the energy perturbations on the Tisserand parameter. There appear to be two main processes, of comparable importance, governing the shortening of semimajor axes to values of less than 1000au, i.e. planetary close encounters, especially with Jupiter, and indirect perturbations due to the shifting of the motion from barycentric to heliocentric and back; the former process mostly affects comets crossing the ecliptic at about 5.2au, or on low-inclination orbits, while the latter mostly affects comets of small perihelion distance. This last result may help to understand the relative paucity of Halley-type comets with perihelion distances larger than about 1.5au.

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