Published in

American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(749), p. 29, 2012

DOI: 10.1088/0004-637x/749/1/29

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Narrow Dust Jets in a Diffuse Gas Coma: A Natural Product of Small Active Regions on Comets

Journal article published in 2012 by M. R. Combi, V. M. Tenishev, M. Rubin ORCID, N. Fougere, Tamas I. Gombosi
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Comets often display narrow dust jets but more diffuse gas comae when their eccentric orbits bring them into the inner solar system and sunlight sublimates the ice on the nucleus. Comets are also understood to have one or more active areas covering only a fraction of the total surface active with sublimating volatile ices. Calculations of the gas and dust distribution from a small active area on a comet's nucleus show that as the gas moves out radially into the vacuum of space it expands tangentially, filling much of the hemisphere centered on the active region. The dust dragged by the gas remains more concentrated over the active area. This explains some puzzling appearances of comets having collimated dust jets but more diffuse gaseous atmospheres. Our test case is 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the Rosetta mission target comet, whose activity is dominated by a single area covering only 4% of its surface.