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On the scattering and dynamical evolution of Oort cloud comets caused by a stellar fly-by

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2022

E. Pilat-Lohinger Open the ORCID record for E. Pilat-Lohinger [Opens in a new window] ,
S. Clees ,
M. Zimmermann Open the ORCID record for M. Zimmermann [Opens in a new window]  and
B. Loibnegger Open the ORCID record for B. Loibnegger [Opens in a new window]
E. Pilat-Lohinger
Affiliation:
Dept. of Astrophysics, University of Vienna, Türkenschanzstrasse 17, A-1180 Vienna, Austria email: elke.pilat-lohinger@univie.ac.at
S. Clees
Affiliation:
Dept. of Astrophysics, University of Vienna, Türkenschanzstrasse 17, A-1180 Vienna, Austria email: elke.pilat-lohinger@univie.ac.at
M. Zimmermann
Affiliation:
Dept. of Astrophysics, University of Vienna, Türkenschanzstrasse 17, A-1180 Vienna, Austria email: elke.pilat-lohinger@univie.ac.at
B. Loibnegger
Affiliation:
Dept. of Astrophysics, University of Vienna, Türkenschanzstrasse 17, A-1180 Vienna, Austria email: elke.pilat-lohinger@univie.ac.at
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Abstract

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Recent GAIA observations revealed that the K-type star Gliese 710 will cross the Oort cloud in a distance between approximately 4000 and 12000 au in about 1.3 Myrs. This occurrence motivated us to study the influence of a stellar encounter on comets in the outer region of the solar system. Even if the Oort cloud extends to 100000 au from the sun, we restrict our study to the region between 30 and 25000 au where 25 million objects are distributed randomly. Comets at larger distances are not taken into account as they hardly enter the observable region after a single stellar fly-by. An overview of all objects that are scattered towards the sun for the different fly-by distances at 4000, 8000 and 12000 au shows that only a handful of objects are moving towards the sun immediately after the stellar encounter.

However, a subsequent long-term study of all objects that are moved into highly eccentric motion by the stellar fly-by shows a significant increase of comets crossing Jupiter’s orbit and entering into the observable region. In addition, our study shows the first comets crossing the orbit of Earth only about 2.5 Myrs after the stellar fly-by. Thus, the impact risk for the Earth increases only some million years after the stellar fly-by.

Keywords

comets: generalOort Cloudsolar system: general
Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 15 , Symposium S364: Multi-scale (Time and Mass) Dynamics of Space Objects (Oct 2021) , October 2019 , pp. 214 - 219
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Astronomical Union

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