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Physical and Dynamical Evolution of Long-Period Comets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2015

Paul R. Weissman
Paul R. Weissman*
Affiliation:
Department of Earth and Space Sciences University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024 Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, CA 91103

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Oort (1950) first suggested that the source of the long-period comets is a large spherical cloud of comets surrounding the solar system and extending roughly halfway to the nearest stars. The observational evidence for this is the distribution of original inverse semi-major axes of the long-period comets which shows a large spike of comets at very small positive values of 1/ao, less than 10−4 AU−1. Attempts to model the evolution of these comets by Oort in his original paper, by Kendall (1961), Shteins (1961), and Whipple (1962) were successful in recreating the general shape of the 1/ao distribution. However in each case the authors were unable to match the observed ratio of new comets from the Oort cloud versus older comets evolving under the influence of planetary perturbations.

Type
Part VI: Comets
Information
Symposium - International Astronomical Union , Volume 81: Dynamics of the Solar System , 1979 , pp. 277 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © Reidel 1979 

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