AST 301, Debris Lecture James Lattimer Department of Physics & Astronomy 449 ESS Bldg. Stony Brook University February 26, 2019 Cosmic Catastrophes
[email protected] James Lattimer AST 301, Debris Lecture Debris in the Solar System: Comets Hale-Bopp I \Dirty snowballs", a mixture of ices and dust, ejected from solar system when planets formed I Mass mostly contained in a nucleus (solid dirty snowball) with km-sized diameter Hally's nucleus I Coma, a cloud of H2O, CO2 and other gases va- porized from nucleus during close passage to Sun from Giotto I Hydrogen cloud, huge but sparse neutral H cloud I Dust tail, 1{10 million km long, dust driven off nucleus by escaping gases when close to Sun I Ion tail, 100's of millions of km long, plasma driven off by solar wind I Most comets reside far outside the orbit of Pluto, a few occasionally perturbed into close-solar orbits; some are in elliptical orbits and reappear I After a few hundred passages near the Sun, icy material is lost, Shoemaker-Levy 9 before Jupiter impact leaves dead comet which can be mis- taken for asteroid. James Lattimer AST 301, Debris Lecture Comet Holmes, Halloween, 2007 V. Peris and J. L. Lamadrid Fragment G HST 7/18/1994 Shoemaker-Levy 9 HST 7/7/1994 James Lattimer AST 301, Debris Lecture Comets History I Records of comets exist at least to 1140 BC I Brahe observed comet of 1577, proved they are extraterrestrial I Halley: some comets are periodic (1531, 1607, 1682) I Halley's Comet: 2467 BC (?), 240 BC (China), 1066 (Bayeux Tapestry) I Motivated Newton to develop gravity theory Orbits I Hyperbolic: pass Sun once, depart forever I Elliptical: periodic I Peri-/Aphelion: closest/farthest solar approach Origin I Short-period come from Kuiper Belt, 35,000 icy bodies larger than 100 km, 30-100 AU I Long-period come from Oort comet cloud, ∼ 1012 comets, 30,000 AU{1 lt.