Title
On the scattering and dynamical evolution of Oort cloud comets caused by a stellar fly-by
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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. 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
Object type
Language
English [eng]
Persistent identifier
https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:1590482
Appeared in
Title
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union
Volume
15
Issue
S364
ISSN
1743-9213
Issued
2019
From page
214
To page
219
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date issued
2022
Access rights
Rights statement
© The Author(s), 2022

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