On the Existence of a Super-Kreutz System of Sungrazing Comets
Zdenek Sekanina

TL;DR
This paper proposes the concept of a super-Kreutz system encompassing all related sungrazers from a common progenitor, and explores their fragmentation history and relationships to better understand the Kreutz system's formation.
Contribution
It introduces the idea of a super-Kreutz system, extending the Kreutz system to include all related objects from a shared parent, and models their fragmentation history.
Findings
Estimated ratio of super-Kreutz members to nonmembers.
Generated pedigree charts illustrating relationships among sungrazers.
Suggested that the Kreutz system is an end-stage of the super-Kreutz system.
Abstract
In the context of a recently proposed contact-binary model of the Kreutz system, all its members are products of the process of cascading fragmentation of the two lobes of the parent, Aristotle's comet of 372 BC. This process presumably began with the lobes' separation from each other near aphelion. However, not every object in a Kreutz-like orbit is a Kreutz sungrazer. Any surviving sungrazer that had split off from the progenitor before the lobes separated, as well as its surviving fragments born in any subsequent tidal or nontidal event, are by definition not members of the Kreutz system. Yet, as parts of the same progenitor, they belong -- as do all Kreutz sungrazers -- to a broader assemblage of related objects, which I refer to as a super-Kreutz system. After estimating the ratio of the number of super-Kreutz members to nonmembers among potential historical sungrazers, I generate…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAstro and Planetary Science · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · Marine and environmental studies
