Related papers: Comets in context: Comparing comet compositions wi…
Complex organic molecules serve as indicators of molecular diversity. Their detection on comets, planets, and moons has prompted inquiries into their origins, particularly the conditions conducive to their formation. One hypothesis suggests…
Comets likely formed in the outer regions of the protosolar nebula where they incorporated and preserved primitive presolar materials, volatiles resident in the outer disk, and more refractory materials from throughout the disk. The return…
The chemical composition of comets is frequently assumed to be directly provided by the observations of the abundances of volatile molecules in the coma. The present work aims to determine the relationship between the chemical composition…
(Abridged) The birth environment of the Sun will have influenced the conditions in the pre-solar nebula, including the attainable chemical complexity, important for prebiotic chemistry. The formation and distribution of complex organic…
A numerical simulation of the Oort cloud is used to explain the observed orbital distributions and numbers of Jupiter-family and Halley-type short-period comets. Comets are given initial orbits with perihelion distances between 5 and 36 AU,…
Comets are classified from their orbital characteristics into two separate classes: nearly-isotropic, mainly long-period comets and ecliptic, short-period comets. Members from the former class are coming from the Oort cloud. Those of the…
In the late stages of accretion leading up to the formation of planetesimals, particles grew to pebbles the size of 1-mm to tens of cm. That is the same size range that dominates the present-day comet mass loss. Meteoroids that size cause…
Most stars form in dense stellar environments, where frequent close encounters can strongly perturb and reshape the early architecture of planetary systems. The solar system, with its rich population of distant comets, provides a natural…
The Oort Cloud remains one of the most poorly explored regions of the Solar System. We propose that its properties can be constrained by studying a population of dust grains produced in collisions of comets in the outer Solar System. We…
Exocomets are small bodies releasing gas and dust which orbit stars other than the Sun. Their existence was first inferred from the detection of variable absorption features in stellar spectra in the late 1980s using spectroscopy. More…
We present a fully integrated model of comet evolution that couples thermal and compositional processes with dynamical processes continuously, from formation to present-day activity. The combined code takes into account changes in orbital…
Comets are a rich reservoir of complex organic molecules. Ground and space-based observatories have recently greatly enhanced the cometary molecular inventory. Although these molecules' origin is believed to be the cometary nucleus, they…
Most comets are volatile-rich bodies that have recently entered the inner solar system following long-term storage in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud reservoirs. These reservoirs feed several distinct, short-lived "small body"…
Ice naturally forms in the disordered or ``amorphous'' state when accreted from vapor at temperatures and pressures found in the interstellar medium and in the frigid, low density outer regions of the Sun's protoplanetary disk. It is…
Comets contain abundant amounts of organic and inorganic species. Many of the volatile molecules in comets have also been observed in the interstellar medium and some of them even with similar relative abundances, indicating formation under…
A fundamental question in cometary science is whether the different dynamical classes of comets have different chemical compositions, which would reflect different initial conditions. From the ground or Earth orbit, radio and infrared…
Solar and extrasolar comets and extrasolar planets are the subject of numerous studies in order to determine their chemical composition and internal structure. In the case of planetesimals, their compositions are important as they govern in…
Molecular oxygen has been the subject of many observational searches as chemical models predicted it to be a reservoir of oxygen. Although it has been detected in two regions of the interstellar medium, its rarity is a challenge for…
The physical conditions in a collapsing cloud can be traced by observations of molecular lines. To correctly interpret these observations the abundance distributions of the observed species need to be derived. The chemistry in a collapsing…
Since very recently, we acquired knowledge on the existence of comets in extrasolar planetary systems. The formation of comets together with planets around host stars now seems evident. As stars are often born in clusters of interstellar…