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Non-gravitational forces and masses of some long-period comets. The cases of Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2010

Andrea Sosa  and
Julio A. Fernández
Andrea Sosa
Affiliation:
Departamento de Astronomía, Facultad de Ciencias, Igua 4225, 11400, Montevideo, Uruguay email: asosa@fisica.edu.uy, julio@fisica.edu.uy
Julio A. Fernández
Affiliation:
Departamento de Astronomía, Facultad de Ciencias, Igua 4225, 11400, Montevideo, Uruguay email: asosa@fisica.edu.uy, julio@fisica.edu.uy
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Abstract

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By means of a simple non-gravitational force model of the cometary nucleus, which relies on the observed light curves assumed to be a good representation of the water sublimation rate, we estimate the masses of a sample of long-period comets (LPCs).

A critical issue of our method is the assumption of a correlation between visual heliocentric magnitudes and water production rates. This is a necessary assumption because of the sparse observational data of gas production rates (with the exception of very few comets like Hale-Bopp or Hyakutake). In this regard we present here a new correlation for LPCs. We also present the preliminary results for the masses of comets Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake.

Keywords

Comets: generalmethods: analyticaldata analysis
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 5 , Symposium S263: Icy Bodies of the Solar System , August 2009 , pp. 85 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2010

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