Cometary dust trails: I. Survey

摘要: Abstract Cometary dust trails were first observed by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite and consist of large refractory particles ejected from short-period comets at low velocities. Consequently, they tend to be found near orbital paths their parent bodies, long narrow appearance reminescent airplane contrails. An examination entire sky as seen IRAS has resulted in detection a total eight associated with known (Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Encke, Gunn, Kopff, Pons-Winnecke, Schwassmann-Wachmann 1, Tempel 2) well many faint having no parents. Trails tended objects perihelion distances that perihelion. We infer trail phenomenon is general all comets, future spacebased infrared detectors (e.g., ISO) will observe different ensemble other pass through Trail are lose bulk mass particles, have median refractory/volatile ratio ≈3. This suggests may more like “frozen mudballs” than canonical “dirty snowballs.”