Abstract
Stars passing through the Oort cloud eject comets to interstellar space and initiate showers of comets into the planetary region. Monte Carlo simulations of such passages are performed on a representative distribution of cometary orbits. Ejected comets generally lie along a narrow tunnel “drilled” by the star through the cloud. However, shower comets come from the entire cloud, and do not give a strong signature of the star's passage, except in the inverse semimajor axis distribution for the shower comets. The planetary system is likely not experiencing a cometary shower at this time.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Byl, J.: 1983, Galactic perturbations on nearly parabolic cometary orbits, Moon & PlanEts 29, 121–137.
Fernandez, J. A. and Ip, W.-H.: 1987, Time dependent injection of Oort cloud comets into Earth-crossing orbits, Icarus 71, 46–56
Heisler, J. and Tremaine, S.: 1986, The influence of the galactic tidal field on the Oort comet cloud, Icarus 65, 13–26
Hills, J. G.: 1981, Comet showers and the steady-state infall of comets from the Oort cloud, Astron. J. 86, 1730–1740
Hut, P., Alvarez, W., Elder, W. P., Hansen, T., Kauffman, E. G., Keller, G., Shoemaker, E. M. and Weissman, P. R.: 1987, Comet showers as possible causes of stepwise mass extinctions, Nature 329, 118–126
Oort, J. H.: 1950, The structure of the cloud of comets surrounding the solar system and a hypothesis concerning its origin, Bull. Astron. Inst. Netherlands 11, 91–110
Weissman, P. R.: 1980, Stellar perturbations of the cometary cloud, Nature 288, 242–243
Weissman, P. R.: 1991, The angular momentum of the Oort cloud, Icarus 89, 190–193
Weissman, P. R.: 1979, Physical and dynamical evolution of long-period comets in R. L. Duncombe, ed(s)., Dynamics of the Solar System, D. Reidel:Dordrecht, 277–282
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Weissman, P.R. Star passages through the Oort cloud. Earth Moon Planet 72, 25–30 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00117498
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00117498