Destruction of Long-Period Comets

TL;DR

This study analyzes 27 long-period comets, revealing that smaller, fast-spinning nuclei are more prone to disintegration near the Sun, primarily due to rotational break-up, contributing to the understanding of comet fading.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence linking comet disintegration to nucleus size, spin, and sublimation timescales, highlighting rotational break-up as a key destruction mechanism.

Findings

25% of studied comets disintegrated near perihelion.

Disintegrating nuclei are significantly smaller and closer to the Sun.

Rotational break-up explains the destruction of near-Sun long-period comets.

Abstract

We identify a sample of 27 long-period comets for which both non-gravitational accelerations and Lyman-alpha based gas production rates are available. Seven of the 27 comets (i.e. 25 percent) did not survive perihelion because of nucleus fragmentation or complete disintegration. Empirically, the latter nuclei have the smallest gas production rates and the largest non-gravitational accelerations, which are both indicators of small size. Specifically, the disintegrating nuclei have a median radius of only 0.41 km, one quarter of the 1.60 km median radius of those surviving perihelion. The disintegrating comets also have a smaller median perihelion distance (0.48 au) than do the survivors (0.99 au). We compare the order of magnitude timescale for outgassing torques to change the nucleus spin, tau, with the time spent by each comet in strong sublimation, Dt, finding that the disrupted comets are those with tau < Dt. The destruction of near-Sun long-period comets is thus naturally explained as a consequence of rotational break-up. We discuss this process as a contributor to Oort's long mysterious ``fading parameter''.