Comets

Stardust Spacecraft
Hale-Bopp Comet Wild-2
 Historical

Kepler’s discovery of the elliptical nature of orbits helped pave the way for a better
understanding of cometary motion.

Most significant historical episode was Halley’s prediction of the return of the Great
Comet in 1757.

Halley's comet has been followed down through the ages and made a foreboding
appearance during the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and appears in the Bayeaux
Tapestry. Every passage of this comet since 240 BC has been noted.

Improvements in mathematical techniques during the early 19th century made the
prediction of orbits more reliable and many comets were observed and
catalogued.
 What is a Comet?
Comets consist largely of compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and
nitrogen, i.e. so-called “CHON” compounds. These compounds include
ices of water, ammonia, methane, carbon monoxide, and smaller
amounts of other, more complex compounds.

Comets are also made of dust containing silicate minerals found in the
crusts of the terrestrial planets, and a mix of silicate and “CHON” similar
to that found in carbonaceous chondrites.

When far from the sun the comet is a cold, dark "ice ball" only a few km
across. As it nears the sun it begins to "melt" and forms nucleus.
Eventually a coma extending as much as 100 000 km from the nucleus
forms.

The comet becomes surrounded by a sheath of hydrogen gas that is

easily excited to glow. The pale white light that we see is the result of
fluorescence . Cometary tails can reach tens of millions of km in length!
Comet Structure
 The Orbits of Comets
Comets are classified as either short-period or
long- period objects:

Short Period: (such as Halley's) with periods

from years to decades, low orbital inclination
and prograde motion.

Long Period: centuries to thousands of years

(Hyakutake: Period 18 400 a), any inclination
and just as likely retrograde as prograde
Elliptical, not hyperbolic orbits.
A comet in a long, elliptical orbit becomes visible when
the sun's heat vaporizes its ices and pushes the gas and
dust away in a tail.
The orbit of the Leonids' parent body, comet Tempel-Tuttle, projected
onto the ecliptic plane (i.e., the plane in which the Earth orbits the Sun).
The indicated positions of the planets and the comet are those of
February 28, 1998, the date of the comet's closest approach to the Sun.
 Kuiper Belt

Disk-shaped region beyond the orbit of Neptune

that contains countless icy objects; the source of
short-period comets such as Halley.
Largest Known Kuiper Belt Objects
 Oort Cloud

A roughly spherical volume, extending more than

100,000 AU from the Sun, in which up to a trillion
small icy bodies are thought to reside; the source
region for “new” and long-period comets.
Passing stars can
perturb Oort Cloud send
comets “falling into the
solar system

Origin of periodic mass

extinctions?
Shoemaker-Levy Comet Strikes Jupiter
Impacting comets may have brought water to the early Earth
Giotto Mission to Halley’s Comet

Several spacecraft encountered Halley's comet in

1986, but the most significant was the European
Space Agency's Giotto. Launched on July 2nd 1985, it
encountered Halley on March 13th 1986, approaching
to within 600km of the comet's nucleus. Giotto carried
many scientific instruments including cameras and
dust detectors.

Giotto found that the nucleus of the comet measured

around 16 by 8 by 7.5 km, and that the comet was
indeed the "dirty snowball" which Fred Whipple had
suggested years previously.

The nucleus showed hills and "valleys", although the

shape was being altered continuously by the jets of
gas coming through the surface and forming the tail
and coma.
 Stardust Discovery Mission
1999-2006

Stardust is the first U.S. space mission

dedicated solely to the exploration of a
comet, and the first robotic mission
designed to return extraterrestrial
material from outside the orbit of the
Moon.
The Stardust spacecraft will fly between about 63 to 93
miles (100 to 148 km) in front of the nucleus, and through
the halo of gases and dust at the head of comet Wild 2.
During this passage the spacecraft will collect dust and
volatiles. A volatile is material difficult to capture or hold
permanently. The comet samples are expected to be
made up of ancient pre-solar interstellar grains and
nebular condensates that were incorporated into comets
at the birth of the solar system.
Comet Nucleus Mission (ESA)

Rosetta's eleven-year mission

began with a launch on March 2,
2004 from Kourou, French
Guiana. Flying first out to Mars
and then back to Earth, Rosetta
will use the gravitational
momentum from both planets to
slingshot it farther into space. It
will then pass by asteroid Steins
in Sept. 2008 and complete
another Earth gravity assist in
November 2009. Rosetta will fly
by asteroid Lutetia in July 2010
and finally reach comet
Churyumov-Gerasimenko in May
2014.