Thermal Evolution of the Nucleus of the Comet 67P for 120 Years: Numerical Simulations
The purpose of this paper is to estimate to what temperatures and to what depth the outer layers of the cometary nuclei are heated for several dozen revolutions around the Sun, and what changes in the composition of the volatiles occur in this case. This is important because it is not clear how much...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
De Gruyter
2018-09-01
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| Series: | Open Astronomy |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1515/astro-2018-0030 |
| Summary: | The purpose of this paper is to estimate to what temperatures and to what depth the outer layers of the cometary nuclei are heated for several dozen revolutions around the Sun, and what changes in the composition of the volatiles occur in this case. This is important because it is not clear how much the experimentally obtained results on the composition of cometary comes depend on how long the comet is in the current orbit. Our approach to this problem is based on using 3D model of the geometry and dynamics of a cometary nucleus that takes into account the diurnal rotation and orientation of the rotation axis relative to the Sun to simulate the irradiance to take value of temperature the surface of the nucleus and 1D thermal model of the porous ice-rock body. The results of the numerical simulation of heat propagation in the subsurface layers of some points the MA’AT region of the 67P core, obtained for the 20 orbital cycles (close to 130 years), are presented in this paper. |
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| ISSN: | 2543-6376 |