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The influx rate of long-period comets in the Earth's neighborhood and their debris contribution to the interplanetary medium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2015

Julio Angel Fernández*
Affiliation:
Departamento de Astronomia, Facultad de Ciencias, Igua 4225, 11400 Montevideo, Uruguay email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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We analyze the flux of new and evolved long-period comets (LPCs) reaching the Earth's neighborhood (perihelion distances q < 1.3 AU), their physical lifetimes, and their implications as regards to the amount of meteoritic matter that is being deposited in the near-Earth region. The flux of LPCs with q < 1.3 au is found to be of about 340 ± 40, brighter than absolute total magnitude 8.6 (radius R ~ 0.6 km) (Fernández and Sosa 2012). Bearing in mind that most of these comets disintegrate into meteoritic matter, this represents a large contribution to the interplanetary dust complex which requires an amount of matter of about 10 tons s−1 to keep it in steady state. These aspects, as well as the impact rate with Earth of meteoroids of LPC origin, will be discussed in this presentation.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2015