scholarly journals Dynamics of Comets

1992 ◽  
Vol 152 ◽  
pp. 255-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Carusi ◽  
G.B. Valsecchi

The gravitational processes affecting the dynamics of comets are reviewed. At great distances from the Sun the motion of comets is primarily affected by the vertical component of the galactic field, as well as by encounters with stars and giant molecular clouds. When comets move in the region of the planets, encounters with these can strongly affect their motion. A good fraction of all periodic comets spend some time in temporary libration about mean motion resonances with Jupiter; some comets can be captured by this planet as temporary satellites. Finally, there is a small number of objects with orbital characteristics quite different from those of all other short-period comets.

1983 ◽  
Vol 100 ◽  
pp. 133-134
Author(s):  
Frank N. Bash

Bash and Peters (1976) suggested that giant molecular clouds (GMC's) can be viewed as ballistic particles launched from the two-armed spiral-shock (TASS) wave with orbits influenced only by the overall galactic gravitational potential perturbed by the spiral gravitational potential in the arms. For GMC's in the Milky Way, the model predicts that the radial velocity observed from the Sun increases with age (time since launch). We showed that the terminal velocity of CO observed from l ≃ 30° to l ≃ 60° can be understood if all GMC's are born in the spiral pattern given by Yuan (1969) and live 30 × 106 yrs. Older GMC's were predicted to have radial velocities which exceed observed terminal velocities.


2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (14) ◽  
pp. 4214-4217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantin Batygin ◽  
Greg Laughlin

The statistics of extrasolar planetary systems indicate that the default mode of planet formation generates planets with orbital periods shorter than 100 days and masses substantially exceeding that of the Earth. When viewed in this context, the Solar System is unusual. Here, we present simulations which show that a popular formation scenario for Jupiter and Saturn, in which Jupiter migrates inward from a > 5 astronomical units (AU) to a ≈ 1.5 AU before reversing direction, can explain the low overall mass of the Solar System’s terrestrial planets, as well as the absence of planets with a < 0.4 AU. Jupiter’s inward migration entrained s ≳ 10−100 km planetesimals into low-order mean motion resonances, shepherding and exciting their orbits. The resulting collisional cascade generated a planetesimal disk that, evolving under gas drag, would have driven any preexisting short-period planets into the Sun. In this scenario, the Solar System’s terrestrial planets formed from gas-starved mass-depleted debris that remained after the primary period of dynamical evolution.


2019 ◽  
Vol 486 (3) ◽  
pp. 3874-3885 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Carrera ◽  
Eric B Ford ◽  
Andre Izidoro

ABSTRACT Protoplanetary discs are thought to be truncated at orbital periods of around 10 d. Therefore, the origin of rocky short-period planets with P &lt; 10 d is a puzzle. We propose that many of these planets may form through the Type-I migration of planets locked into a chain of mutual mean motion resonances. We ran N-body simulations of planetary embryos embedded in a protoplanetary disc. The embryos experienced gravitational scatterings, collisions, disc torques, and dampening of orbital eccentricity and inclination. We then modelled Kepler observations of these planets using a forward model of both the transit probability and the detection efficiency of the Kepler pipeline. We found that planets become locked into long chains of mean motion resonances that migrate in unison. When the chain reaches the edge of the disc, the inner planets are pushed past the edge due to the disc torques acting on the planets farther out in the chain. Our simulated systems successfully reproduce the observed period distribution of short-period Kepler planets between 1 and 2 R⊕. However, we obtain fewer closely packed short-period planets than in the Kepler sample. Our results provide valuable insight into the planet formation process, and suggests that resonance locks, migration, and dynamical instabilities play important roles in the formation and evolution of close-in small exoplanets.


2019 ◽  
Vol 489 (4) ◽  
pp. 5165-5180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgi Kokaia ◽  
Melvyn B Davies

ABSTRACTGiant molecular clouds (GMCs) are believed to affect the biospheres of planets as their host star passes through them. We simulate the trajectories of stars and GMCs in the Galaxy and determine how often stars pass through GMCs. We find a strong decreasing dependence with Galactocentric radius, and with the velocity perpendicular to the Galactic plane, V$\mathrm{ z}$. The XY-component of the kinematic heating of stars was shown to not affect the GMC hit rate, unlike the Z-dependence (V$\mathrm{ z}$) implies that stars hit fewer GMCs as they age. GMCs are locations of star formation, therefore we also determine how often stars pass near supernovae. For the supernovae the decrease with V$\mathrm{ z}$ is steeper as how fast the star passes through the GMC determines the probability of a supernova encounter. We then integrate a set of Sun-like trajectories to see the implications for the Sun. We find that the Sun hits 1.6 ± 1.3 GMCs per Gyr which results in 1.5 ± 1.1 or (with correction for clustering) 0.8 ± 0.6 supernova closer than 10 pc per Gyr. The different the supernova frequencies are from whether one considers multiple supernovae per GMC crossing (few Myr) as separate events. We then discuss the effect of the GMC hits on the Oort cloud, and the Earth’s climate due to accretion, we also discuss the records of distant supernova. Finally, we determine Galactic Habitable Zone using our model. For the thin disc, we find it to lie between 5.8 and 8.7 kpc and for the thick disc to lie between 4.5 and 7.7 kpc.


1983 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 363-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Weissman

The dynamical evolution of comets in the Oort cloud under the influence of stellar perturbations has been modeled using Monte Carlo techniques. It is shown that the cloud has been depleted over the history of the solar system. Comets are lost from the cloud by direct ejection due to close stellar encounters, diffusion of aphelia to distances beyond the sun’s sphere of influence, or diffusion of perihelia into the planetary region where Jupiter and Saturn perturbations either eject them on hyperbolic trajectories or capture them to short-period orbits. The population of the cloud is estimated to be 1.0 – 1.5 × 1012 comets and the total mass is on the order of 1.9 earth masses. In addition to random passing stars, less frequent encounters with giant molecular clouds may play a significant role in randomizing the orbits of comets in the cloud and reducing the effective radius of the sun’s sphere of influence.


1974 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 193-203
Author(s):  
L̆ubor Kresák

AbstractStructural effects of the resonance with the mean motion of Jupiter on the system of short-period comets are discussed. The distribution of mean motions, determined from sets of consecutive perihelion passages of all known periodic comets, reveals a number of gaps associated with low-order resonance; most pronounced are those corresponding to the simplest commensurabilities of 5/2, 2/1, 5/3, 3/2, 1/1 and 1/2. The formation of the gaps is explained by a compound effect of five possible types of behaviour of the comets set into an approximate resonance, ranging from quick passages through the gap to temporary librations avoiding closer approaches to Jupiter. In addition to the comets of almost asteroidal appearance, librating with small amplitudes around the lower resonance ratios (Marsden, 1970b), there is an interesting group of faint diffuse comets librating in characteristic periods of about 200 years, with large amplitudes of about±8% in μ and almost±180° in σ, around the 2/1 resonance gap. This transient type of motion appears to be nearly as frequent as a circulating motion with period of revolution of less than one half that of Jupiter. The temporary members of this group are characteristic not only by their appearance but also by rather peculiar discovery conditions.


1977 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 69-74

The discussion was separated into 3 different topics according to the separation made by the reviewer between the different periods of waves observed in the sun :1) global modes (long period oscillations) with predominantly radial harmonic motion.2) modes with large coherent - wave systems but not necessarily global excitation (300 s oscillation).3) locally excited - short period waves.


1991 ◽  
Vol 148 ◽  
pp. 415-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. Booth ◽  
Th. De Graauw

In this short review we describe recent new observations of millimetre transitions of molecules in selected regions of the Magellanic Clouds. The observations were made using the Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope, SEST, (Booth et al. 1989), the relatively high resolution of which facilitates, for the first time, observations of individual giant molecular clouds in the Magellanic Clouds. We have mapped the distribution of the emission from the two lowest rotational transitions of 12CO and 13CO and hence have derived excitation conditions for the molecule. In addition, we have observed several well-known interstellar molecules in the same regions, thus doubling the number of known molecules in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The fact that all the observations have been made under controlled conditions with the same telescope enables a reasonable intercomparison of the molecular column densities. In particular, we are able to observe the relative abundances among the different isotopically substituted species of CO.


Author(s):  
Yingtian Chen ◽  
Hui Li ◽  
Mark Vogelsberger

Abstract We perform a suite of hydrodynamic simulations to investigate how initial density profiles of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) affect their subsequent evolution. We find that the star formation duration and integrated star formation efficiency of the whole clouds are not sensitive to the choice of different profiles but are mainly controlled by the interplay between gravitational collapse and stellar feedback. Despite this similarity, GMCs with different profiles show dramatically different modes of star formation. For shallower profiles, GMCs first fragment into many self-gravitation cores and form sub-clusters that distributed throughout the entire clouds. These sub-clusters are later assembled ‘hierarchically’ to central clusters. In contrast, for steeper profiles, a massive cluster is quickly formed at the center of the cloud and then gradually grows its mass via gas accretion. Consequently, central clusters that emerged from clouds with shallower profiles are less massive and show less rotation than those with the steeper profiles. This is because 1) a significant fraction of mass and angular momentum in shallower profiles is stored in the orbital motion of the sub-clusters that are not able to merge into the central clusters 2) frequent hierarchical mergers in the shallower profiles lead to further losses of mass and angular momentum via violent relaxation and tidal disruption. Encouragingly, the degree of cluster rotations in steeper profiles is consistent with recent observations of young and intermediate-age clusters. We speculate that rotating globular clusters are likely formed via an ‘accretion’ mode from centrally-concentrated clouds in the early Universe.


2020 ◽  
Vol 499 (3) ◽  
pp. 3738-3748
Author(s):  
R H Østensen ◽  
C S Jeffery ◽  
H Saio ◽  
J J Hermes ◽  
J H Telting ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT The Kepler spacecraft observed the hot subdwarf star PHL 417 during its extended K2 mission, and the high-precision photometric light curve reveals the presence of 17 pulsation modes with periods between 38 and 105 min. From follow-up ground-based spectroscopy, we find that the object has a relatively high temperature of 35 600 K, a surface gravity of $\log g / {\rm cm\, s^{-2}}\, =\, 5.75$ and a supersolar helium abundance. Remarkably, it also shows strong zirconium lines corresponding to an apparent +3.9 dex overabundance compared with the Sun. These properties clearly identify this object as the third member of the rare group of pulsating heavy-metal stars, the V366-Aquarii pulsators. These stars are intriguing in that the pulsations are inconsistent with the standard models for pulsations in hot subdwarfs, which predicts that they should display short-period pulsations rather than the observed longer periods. We perform a stability analysis of the pulsation modes based on data from two campaigns with K2. The highest amplitude mode is found to be stable with a period drift, $\dot{P}$, of less than 1.1 × 10−9 s s−1. This result rules out pulsations driven during the rapid stages of helium flash ignition.


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