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Is Water Ice the Major Difference Between Comets and Asteroids?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

A.H. Delsemme
A.H. Delsemme*
Affiliation:
University of Toledo

Abstract

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The nature of the volatile phase in comets has never been established from observations. Although water was likely to be its major constituent, evidence was still circumstantial. It is shown here that water evaporation quantitatively explains not only the brightness of the hydrogen and hydroxyl halos observed by the OAO for the two bright comets of 1970, but also, which is much more convincing, it explains their brightness dependence on the heliocentric distance.

Type
Part II-Origin of Asteroids Interrelations with Comets, Meteorites, and Meteors
Information
International Astronomical Union Colloquium , Volume 12: Physical Studies of Minor Planets , 1971 , pp. 461 - 464
Copyright
Copyright © NASA 1971

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