The unexpected gas will probably not stay between the asteroids for very long. Computer simulations show that it will have a close encounter with Jupiter again in about two years. The solid planet will pick up the comet from the system, and it will continue its journey to the inner solar system.
“The coolest thing is that you actually catch Jupiter to throw this object around and to change its orbital behavior and bring it into the inner system,” said team member Carey Lisse of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel , Maryland, said. . “Jupiter controls what goes on with comets as soon as they end up in the inner system by changing their orbits.”
The icy intermediary is most likely one of the youngest members of the so-called “bucket brigade” comets kicked out of its icy house in the Kuiper Belt and into the giant planetary region by interactions with another object of the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt is past the orbit of Neptune and is a refuge of icy, residual debris from the construction of our planets, 4.6 billion years ago, with millions of objects. Sometimes these objects almost miss or collisions that drastically change their orbits from the Kuiper belt inward into the giant planetary region.
The bucket brigade of icy remains endures a bumpy ride during their journey to the sun. They bounce gravely from one outer planet to the next in a game of celestial pinball before reaching the inner solar system, and they warm up as they get closer to the sun. According to the researchers, the objects spend as much or even more time around the giant planets, which draw gravity on them – about 5 million years – than they cross in the inner system where we live.
“Comets from the ‘short-period’ inner system break up about once a century,” Lisse explained. “To maintain the number of local comets we see today, we think the bucket brigade should deliver a new comet about once every 100 years.”
An early bloom
To see researchers how degassing activities on a comet come 465 million miles from the sun (where the intensity of sunlight is 1 / 25th as strong as on Earth). “We were interested to see that the comet only began to become active for the first time so far from the sun at distances where the ice was barely beginning to sublimate,” Bolin said.
Water remains frozen on a comet until it reaches about 200 million miles from the sun, where heat from sunlight converts water ice into gas escaping from the core in the form of rays. The activity therefore indicates that the tail may not have been made of water. In fact, observations by Spitzer have indicated the presence of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide gas, which could cause the creation of the tail and rays orbiting the Jupiter comet. These volatiles do not need much sunlight to heat their frozen form and convert it into gas.
Once the comet is kicked out of Jupiter’s orbit and continues its journey, it can meet the giant planet again. “Comets as short periods as LD2 meet their fate by throwing into the sun and completely disintegrating, hitting a planet, or once again venturing too close to Jupiter and throwing out of the solar system, which is the usual fate, said Lisse. . “Simulations show that in about 500,000 years there is a probability that this object will become out of the solar system and become an interstellar comet.”
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international collaboration between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, controls the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts scientific operations of Hubble. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Washington, DC NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, managed the Spitzer mission for NASA’s Directorate Science Mission in Washington, DC, DC. at the Spitzer Science Center at IPAC at Caltech. Spitzer’s entire science catalog is available via the Spitzer Data Archive, housed in the Infrared Science Archive at IPAC. Spacecraft operations were based at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado.
For more information, visit:
https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2021/news-2021-05
http://www.nasa.gov/hubble