On the scattering and dynamical evolution of Oort cloud comets caused by a stellar fly-by
Abstract
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.
- Publication:
-
Multi-Scale (Time and Mass) Dynamics of Space Objects
- Pub Date:
- 2022
- DOI:
- 10.1017/S1743921321001332
- Bibcode:
- 2022IAUS..364..214P
- Keywords:
-
- comets: general;
- Oort Cloud;
- solar system: general