Directional Distribution of Observable Comets Induced by a Star Passage through the Oort Cloud

  • Piotr A. Dybczyński
Conference paper

Abstract

We simulated the passage of a star through the Oort cometary cloud and analyzed the resulting sample of observable long period comets, noting strong asymmetries in the directional distribution of the perihelion points of those comets. We discuss the results previously published by Weissman (1996) for the same case. An explanation is suggested why the isotropic output can be obtained only for a very peculiar case. The “cometary shower” density variation with time is also presented and the time-dependence of the directional distribution is discussed.

Keywords

Comets Oort cloud stellar passages 

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References

  1. Duncan, M., Quinn, T., and Tremaine, S.: 1987, AT 94, 1330–1338.ADSGoogle Scholar
  2. Dybczynski, P. A.: 2002, A A 383, 1049–1053.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Oort, J. H.: 1950, Bull. Astron. Inst. Neth. 11, 91–110.ADSGoogle Scholar
  4. Weissman, P. R.: 1996, Earth Moon Planets 72, 25–30.ADSCrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2002

Authors and Affiliations

  • Piotr A. Dybczyński
    • 1
  1. 1.Astronomical ObservatoryA. Mickiewicz UniversityPoznańPoland

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