Vulcanoid Asteroids and Sun-Grazing Comets – Past Encounters and Possible Outcomes

Martin Beech; Lowell Peltier

doi:doi:10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12

| Peer-Reviewed

Vulcanoid Asteroids and Sun-Grazing Comets – Past Encounters and Possible Outcomes

Martin Beech, Lowell Peltier

Published in American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics (Volume 3, Issue 2)

Received: 2 April 2015 Accepted: 14 April 2015 Published: 27 April 2015

Views: Downloads:

Download PDF

Share This Article

Twitter
Linked In
Facebook

Abstract

The region between 0.07 to 0.25 au from the Sun is regularly crossed by sungrazing and small perihelion distance periodic comets. This zone also supports stable orbits that may be occupied by Vulcanoid asteroids. In this article we review the circumstances associated with those comets known to have passed through the putative Vulcanoid region, and we review the various histories associated with a sub-group of these comets that have been observed to displayed anomalous behaviors shortly before or after perihelion passage. In all 406 known comets are found to have passed through the Vulcanoid zone; the earliest recorded comet to do so being C/400 F1, with comet C/2008 J13 (SOHO) being the last in the data set used (complete to 2014). Only two of these comets, however, are known to be short period comets, C/1917 F1 Mellish and 96P / Machholz 1, with the majority being sungrazing comets moving along parabolic orbits. We examine the case history of comet C/1917 F1 Mellish in some detail since numerical simulations suggest that over the past ~ 40 thousand years it has regularly passed through the Vulcanoid zone. Additionally, this particular comet is linked to the December Monocerotid meteor shower, which is known to have produced a series of very bright fireball displays in the 11th Century. An extremely small impact probability of order 10-19 per perihelion passage with a Vulcanoid of diameter 1 km or larger is determined for comet Mellish, and we conclude that the ancient fireball display is not likely associated with a Vulcanoid collision. Indeed, while we find no evidence to indicate that any historical collisions between a cometary nucleus and a Vulcanoid have occurred, this result, we suggest, does not automatically mean that no Vulcanoids exist at the present time, or that collisions have not taken place in the past. Likewise, these results do not rule out the possibility of collisions being observable at future times. As ever, since first being hypothesized, if they exist at all, the Vulcanoid asteroids remain elusive.

Published in	American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics (Volume 3, Issue 2)
DOI	10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12
Page(s)	26-36
Creative Commons	This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright	Copyright © The Author(s), 2015. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Vulcanoids, Cometary Impacts, Cometary Outbursts, Meteor Showers

References

[1]	Taylor, M. G. G. et al. 2015. Rosetta begins its comet tale. Science, 347, 387.
[2]	Jenniskens, P. 2006. Meteor Showers and their Parent Comets. CUP, Cambridge.
[3]	Hsieh, H. H, and Jewitt, D. 2006. A population of comets in the main asteroid belt. Science, 312, 561.
[4]	Bertini, I. 2011. Main belt comets: a new class of small bodies in the solar system. Plan. Space Sci. 59, 365.
[5]	Hainaut, O. R., et al. 2012. P/2010 A2. I: an impact in the asteroid belt. A&A. 537, A69.
[6]	Beech, M., and Gauer, K. 2002. Cosmic roulette: comets in the main belt asteroid region. EMP. 88, 211.
[7]	Campbell, W. W., and Trumpler, R. 1923. Search for intramercurial bodies. PASP. 35, 214.
[8]	Baum, R., and Sheehan, W. 1997. In Search of Planet Vulcan, the ghost in Newton’s clockwork machine. Plenum Press, New York.
[9]	Durda, D. D., et al. 2000. A new observational search for Vulcanoids in SOHO/LASCO coronagraph images. Icarus, 148, 312.
[10]	Schumacher, G., and Gay, J. 2001. An attempt to detect Vulcanoids with SOHO/LASCO images I. Scale relativity and quantization of the solar system. A&A. 368, 1108.
[11]	Steffl, A. J., Cunningham, N. J., Shinn, A. B., Durda, D. D., and Stern, S. A. 2013. A search for Vulcanoids with the STEREO heliosphere imager. Icarus, 223, 48.
[12]	Hughes, D. W. 1990. Cometary outbursts: a review. Q. J. R. Astr. Soc. 31, 69.
[13]	Gronkowski, P. 2002. Outbursts of comets – the case of 1P/Halley. Plan. Space Sci. 50, 247.
[14]	Boehnhardt, H. 2004. Split comets. In Comets II, M. C. Festou, H. U. Keller, and H. A. Weaver (Eds.), University of Arizona Press, Tucson. p. 301.
[15]	Courten, H. C., Brown, D. W., and Albert, D. B. 1976. Summary paper: ten years of solar eclipse comet searches. BAAS. 8, 504.
[16]	Swift, L. 1878. Discovery of Vulcan. Nature, 18, 539.
[17]	Merline, W. J., et al. 2008. A program to search for Vulcanoids from MESSENGER. BAAS. 40, 491.
[18]	Chapman, C. R. et al. 2008. First MESSENGER insights concerning the early cratering history of Mercury. www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/bombardment2008/pdf/3014.pdf.
[19]	Evans, N. W., and Tabachnik, S. A. 1999. Possible long-lived asteroid belts in the inner solar system. Nature, 399, 41
[20]	Evans, N. W., and Tabachnik, S. A. 2002. Structure of possible long-lived asteroid belts. MNRAS. 333, L1.
[21]	Campins, H., Davis, D. R., Weidenschilling, S. J., and Magee, M. 1996. Searching for Vulcanoids. In Completing the Inventory of the Solar System, T. W. Rettig and J. M. Hahn (Eds.), ASP Conference Series, 107, p. 85.
[22]	Stern, S. A., and Durda, D. D. 2000. Collisional evolution of the Vulcanoid region: implications for present-day population constraints. Icarus, 143, 360.
[23]	Vokrouhlicky, D., Farinella, P., and Bottke, W. F. 2000. The depletion of the putative Vulcanoid population via the Yarkovsky effect. Icarus, 148, 147.
[24]	Belton, M. J. 2015. The mass distribution of Jupiter family comets. Icarus, 245, 87.
[25]	Marsden, B. 2005. Sungrazing comets. ARAA. 43, 75.
[26]	Kronk, G. W. 1999. Cometography – a catalogue of comets volume 1: ancient-1799. CUP, Cambridge.
[27]	Christou, A. A. 2010. Annual meteor showers at Venus and Mars: lessons from the Earth. MNRAS. 402, 2759.
[28]	Astapovich, I. S., and Terenteva, A. K. 1968. Fireball radiants appearing between the 1st and 15th centuries. In Physics and Dynamics of Meteors. L. Kresak and P. M. Millman (Eds.), Reidel, Dordrecht. p. 308.
[29]	Beech, M. 1998. Venus-intercepting meteoroid streams. MNRAS. 294, 259.
[30]	Treiman, A. H., and Treiman, J. S. 2000. Cometary dust streams at Mars: preliminary predictions from meteor streams at Earth from periodic comets. J. Geophys. Res. 105, 24,571.
[31]	http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/index.php?p=news/machholz_babies.
[32]	Beech, M., and Brown, P. 1995. On the visibility of bright Venusian fireballs from Earth. EMP. 68, 171.
[33]	Campbell-Brown, M. 2004. Radar observations of the Arietids. MNRAS. 352, 1421.
[34]	Fernandez, Y. R. 2009. That’s the way the comet crumbles: splitting Jupiter-family comets. Plan. Space Sci. 57, 1218.
[35]	Ohtsuka, K., Nakano, S., and Yoshikawa, M. 2003. On the association among periodic comet 96P/Machholz, Arietids, the Marsden comet group, and the Kracht comet group. Publ. Astron. Soc. Japan, 55, 321.
[36]	Sekanina, Z., and Chodas, P. 2007. Fragmentation hierarchy of bright sungrazing comets and the birth and orbital evolution of the Kreutz system II. The case for cascading fragmentation. ApJ. 663, 657
[37]	Sekhar, A., and Asher, D. J. 2014. Meteor showers on Earth from sungrazing comets. MNRAS. 437, L71.
[38]	Schleicher, D. G. 2008. The extremely anomalous molecular abundances of comet 96P/Machholz 1 from narrowband photometry. Astron. J. 136, 2204.
[39]	Neslusan, L., Hajdukova, M., and Jakubik, M. 2013. Meteor-shower complex of asteroid 2003 EH1 compared with that of comet 96P/Machholz. A&A. 560, id A47.
[40]	De la Fuente Marcos, C., de la Fuente Marcos, R, and Aarseth, S. J. 2015. Flipping minor bodies: what comet 96P/Machholz 1 can tell us about the orbital evolution of extreme trans-Neptunian objects and the production of near-Earth objects on retrograde orbits. MNRAS. 446. 1867.
[41]	Biesecker, D. A., Lamy, P., St. Cyr, O. C., Llebaria, A., and Howard, R. A. 2002. Sungrazing comets discovered with the SOHO/LASCO coronagraphs 1996- 1998. Icarus, 157, 323.
[42]	Veres, P., Kornos, L., and Toth, J. 2011. Meteor showers of comet C/1917 F1 Mellish. MNRAS. 412, 511.
[43]	Neslusan, L., and Hajdukova, M. 2014. The meteor-shower complex of comet C/1917 F1 (Mellish). A&A. 566, A33.
[44]	Whipple, F. 1954. Photographic meteor orbits and their distribution in space. Astron. J. 59, 201.
[45]	Lindblad, B. A., and Olsson-Steel. D. 1990. The Monocerotid meteor stream and comet Mellish. Bull. Astron. Inst. Czechosl. 41, 193.
[46]	Brown, P., Wong, D., Weryk, R., and Wiegert, P. 2010. A meteoroid stream survey using the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar II: identification of minor showers using a 3D wavelet transform. Icarus, 207, 66.
[47]	Hasegawa, I. 1999. Historical meteor showers – Geminids and December Monocerotids. In Meteoroids 1998, W. J. Baggaley and V. Porubcan (Eds.), Astron. Inst. Slovak Acad. Sci. Bratislava. p.177.
[48]	Fox, K., and Williams, I. P. 1985. A possible origin for some ancient December fireballs. MNRAS. 217, 407.
[49]	Kessler, D. 1981. Derivation of the collision probability between orbiting objects: the lifetime of Jupiter’s outer moons. Icarus, 48, 39.
[50]	Opik, E. 1951. Collision probability with the planets and the distribution of planetary matter. Proc. Roy. Irish Acad. 54A, 165.
[51]	Dohnanyi, J. S. 1972. Interplanetary objects in review: statistics of their masses and dynamics. Icarus, 17, 1.
[52]	A’Hearn, M. F., et al. 2005. Deep Impact: excavating comet Tempel 1. Science, 310, 258.
[53]	Sekanina, Z. 2002. Statistical investigation and modeling of sungrazing comets discovered with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. Ap. J. 566, 577.
[54]	Chen, J., and Jewitt, D. 1994. On the rate at which comets split. Icarus, 108, 265.

Cite This Article

Plain Text BibTeX RIS

APA Style

Martin Beech, Lowell Peltier. (2015). Vulcanoid Asteroids and Sun-Grazing Comets – Past Encounters and Possible Outcomes. American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 3(2), 26-36. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12

Copy | Download

ACS Style

Martin Beech; Lowell Peltier. Vulcanoid Asteroids and Sun-Grazing Comets – Past Encounters and Possible Outcomes. Am. J. Astron. Astrophys. 2015, 3(2), 26-36. doi: 10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12

Copy | Download

AMA Style

Martin Beech, Lowell Peltier. Vulcanoid Asteroids and Sun-Grazing Comets – Past Encounters and Possible Outcomes. Am J Astron Astrophys. 2015;3(2):26-36. doi: 10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12

Copy | Download

@article{10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12,
  author = {Martin Beech and Lowell Peltier},
  title = {Vulcanoid Asteroids and Sun-Grazing Comets – Past Encounters and Possible Outcomes},
  journal = {American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics},
  volume = {3},
  number = {2},
  pages = {26-36},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajaa.20150302.12},
  abstract = {The region between 0.07 to 0.25 au from the Sun is regularly crossed by sungrazing and small perihelion distance periodic comets. This zone also supports stable orbits that may be occupied by Vulcanoid asteroids. In this article we review the circumstances associated with those comets known to have passed through the putative Vulcanoid region, and we review the various histories associated with a sub-group of these comets that have been observed to displayed anomalous behaviors shortly before or after perihelion passage. In all 406 known comets are found to have passed through the Vulcanoid zone; the earliest recorded comet to do so being C/400 F1, with comet C/2008 J13 (SOHO) being the last in the data set used (complete to 2014). Only two of these comets, however, are known to be short period comets, C/1917 F1 Mellish and 96P / Machholz 1, with the majority being sungrazing comets moving along parabolic orbits. We examine the case history of comet C/1917 F1 Mellish in some detail since numerical simulations suggest that over the past ~ 40 thousand years it has regularly passed through the Vulcanoid zone. Additionally, this particular comet is linked to the December Monocerotid meteor shower, which is known to have produced a series of very bright fireball displays in the 11th Century. An extremely small impact probability of order 10-19 per perihelion passage with a Vulcanoid of diameter 1 km or larger is determined for comet Mellish, and we conclude that the ancient fireball display is not likely associated with a Vulcanoid collision. Indeed, while we find no evidence to indicate that any historical collisions between a cometary nucleus and a Vulcanoid have occurred, this result, we suggest, does not automatically mean that no Vulcanoids exist at the present time, or that collisions have not taken place in the past. Likewise, these results do not rule out the possibility of collisions being observable at future times. As ever, since first being hypothesized, if they exist at all, the Vulcanoid asteroids remain elusive.},
 year = {2015}
}

Copy | Download

TY  - JOUR
T1  - Vulcanoid Asteroids and Sun-Grazing Comets – Past Encounters and Possible Outcomes
AU  - Martin Beech
AU  - Lowell Peltier
Y1  - 2015/04/27
PY  - 2015
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12
DO  - 10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12
T2  - American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics
JF  - American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics
JO  - American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics
SP  - 26
EP  - 36
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2376-4686
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12
AB  - The region between 0.07 to 0.25 au from the Sun is regularly crossed by sungrazing and small perihelion distance periodic comets. This zone also supports stable orbits that may be occupied by Vulcanoid asteroids. In this article we review the circumstances associated with those comets known to have passed through the putative Vulcanoid region, and we review the various histories associated with a sub-group of these comets that have been observed to displayed anomalous behaviors shortly before or after perihelion passage. In all 406 known comets are found to have passed through the Vulcanoid zone; the earliest recorded comet to do so being C/400 F1, with comet C/2008 J13 (SOHO) being the last in the data set used (complete to 2014). Only two of these comets, however, are known to be short period comets, C/1917 F1 Mellish and 96P / Machholz 1, with the majority being sungrazing comets moving along parabolic orbits. We examine the case history of comet C/1917 F1 Mellish in some detail since numerical simulations suggest that over the past ~ 40 thousand years it has regularly passed through the Vulcanoid zone. Additionally, this particular comet is linked to the December Monocerotid meteor shower, which is known to have produced a series of very bright fireball displays in the 11th Century. An extremely small impact probability of order 10-19 per perihelion passage with a Vulcanoid of diameter 1 km or larger is determined for comet Mellish, and we conclude that the ancient fireball display is not likely associated with a Vulcanoid collision. Indeed, while we find no evidence to indicate that any historical collisions between a cometary nucleus and a Vulcanoid have occurred, this result, we suggest, does not automatically mean that no Vulcanoids exist at the present time, or that collisions have not taken place in the past. Likewise, these results do not rule out the possibility of collisions being observable at future times. As ever, since first being hypothesized, if they exist at all, the Vulcanoid asteroids remain elusive.
VL  - 3
IS  - 2
ER  -

Copy | Download

Author Information

Martin Beech

Campion College, The University of Regina, Regina, SK, Canada
Lowell Peltier

Department of Physics, The University of Regina, Regina, SK. Canada

Download PDF

Sections

Plain Text BibTeX RIS

APA Style

Martin Beech, Lowell Peltier. (2015). Vulcanoid Asteroids and Sun-Grazing Comets – Past Encounters and Possible Outcomes. American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 3(2), 26-36. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12

Copy | Download

ACS Style

Martin Beech; Lowell Peltier. Vulcanoid Asteroids and Sun-Grazing Comets – Past Encounters and Possible Outcomes. Am. J. Astron. Astrophys. 2015, 3(2), 26-36. doi: 10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12

Copy | Download

AMA Style

Martin Beech, Lowell Peltier. Vulcanoid Asteroids and Sun-Grazing Comets – Past Encounters and Possible Outcomes. Am J Astron Astrophys. 2015;3(2):26-36. doi: 10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12

Copy | Download

@article{10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12,
  author = {Martin Beech and Lowell Peltier},
  title = {Vulcanoid Asteroids and Sun-Grazing Comets – Past Encounters and Possible Outcomes},
  journal = {American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics},
  volume = {3},
  number = {2},
  pages = {26-36},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajaa.20150302.12},
  abstract = {The region between 0.07 to 0.25 au from the Sun is regularly crossed by sungrazing and small perihelion distance periodic comets. This zone also supports stable orbits that may be occupied by Vulcanoid asteroids. In this article we review the circumstances associated with those comets known to have passed through the putative Vulcanoid region, and we review the various histories associated with a sub-group of these comets that have been observed to displayed anomalous behaviors shortly before or after perihelion passage. In all 406 known comets are found to have passed through the Vulcanoid zone; the earliest recorded comet to do so being C/400 F1, with comet C/2008 J13 (SOHO) being the last in the data set used (complete to 2014). Only two of these comets, however, are known to be short period comets, C/1917 F1 Mellish and 96P / Machholz 1, with the majority being sungrazing comets moving along parabolic orbits. We examine the case history of comet C/1917 F1 Mellish in some detail since numerical simulations suggest that over the past ~ 40 thousand years it has regularly passed through the Vulcanoid zone. Additionally, this particular comet is linked to the December Monocerotid meteor shower, which is known to have produced a series of very bright fireball displays in the 11th Century. An extremely small impact probability of order 10-19 per perihelion passage with a Vulcanoid of diameter 1 km or larger is determined for comet Mellish, and we conclude that the ancient fireball display is not likely associated with a Vulcanoid collision. Indeed, while we find no evidence to indicate that any historical collisions between a cometary nucleus and a Vulcanoid have occurred, this result, we suggest, does not automatically mean that no Vulcanoids exist at the present time, or that collisions have not taken place in the past. Likewise, these results do not rule out the possibility of collisions being observable at future times. As ever, since first being hypothesized, if they exist at all, the Vulcanoid asteroids remain elusive.},
 year = {2015}
}

Copy | Download

TY  - JOUR
T1  - Vulcanoid Asteroids and Sun-Grazing Comets – Past Encounters and Possible Outcomes
AU  - Martin Beech
AU  - Lowell Peltier
Y1  - 2015/04/27
PY  - 2015
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12
DO  - 10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12
T2  - American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics
JF  - American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics
JO  - American Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics
SP  - 26
EP  - 36
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2376-4686
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajaa.20150302.12
AB  - The region between 0.07 to 0.25 au from the Sun is regularly crossed by sungrazing and small perihelion distance periodic comets. This zone also supports stable orbits that may be occupied by Vulcanoid asteroids. In this article we review the circumstances associated with those comets known to have passed through the putative Vulcanoid region, and we review the various histories associated with a sub-group of these comets that have been observed to displayed anomalous behaviors shortly before or after perihelion passage. In all 406 known comets are found to have passed through the Vulcanoid zone; the earliest recorded comet to do so being C/400 F1, with comet C/2008 J13 (SOHO) being the last in the data set used (complete to 2014). Only two of these comets, however, are known to be short period comets, C/1917 F1 Mellish and 96P / Machholz 1, with the majority being sungrazing comets moving along parabolic orbits. We examine the case history of comet C/1917 F1 Mellish in some detail since numerical simulations suggest that over the past ~ 40 thousand years it has regularly passed through the Vulcanoid zone. Additionally, this particular comet is linked to the December Monocerotid meteor shower, which is known to have produced a series of very bright fireball displays in the 11th Century. An extremely small impact probability of order 10-19 per perihelion passage with a Vulcanoid of diameter 1 km or larger is determined for comet Mellish, and we conclude that the ancient fireball display is not likely associated with a Vulcanoid collision. Indeed, while we find no evidence to indicate that any historical collisions between a cometary nucleus and a Vulcanoid have occurred, this result, we suggest, does not automatically mean that no Vulcanoids exist at the present time, or that collisions have not taken place in the past. Likewise, these results do not rule out the possibility of collisions being observable at future times. As ever, since first being hypothesized, if they exist at all, the Vulcanoid asteroids remain elusive.
VL  - 3
IS  - 2
ER  -

Copy | Download