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Title:
NOTE: The Rate of Naked-Eye Comets from 101 BC to 1970 AD
Authors:
Licht, A. Lewis
Affiliation:
AA(Department of Physics (m/c 273), University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois)
Publication:
Icarus, Volume 137, Issue 2, pp. 355-356. (Icarus Homepage)
Publication Date:
02/1999
Origin:
ICAR
DOI:
10.1006/icar.1998.6048
Bibliographic Code:
1999Icar..137..355L

Abstract

The number of comets that are bright enough and that come close enough to Earth to be seen with the unaided eye fluctuates randomly from century to century. The mean number seen per century, R, is a parameter determined by the distribution of short-period comets and by the escape of new, near parabolic comets into the inner Solar System from the Oort Cloud (J. H. Oort, 1963, The Solar System, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, London) and the Kuiper Belt (H. F. Levison and M. J. Duncan, 1997, Icarus 127, 13-32). A measurement of R provides a constraint on possible escape mechanisms. In the following it is shown that R can be determined by a comparison of the number of comets reported from the east and west with those reported from both regions. An analysis of the reports compiled by I. Hasegawa (1980, Vistas in Astronomy, Pergamon, Great Britain) shows that R=86.0+/-6.7 comets/century, and moreover R has been remarkably constant over the past two millennia. One could conclude from this that the mean rate at which all comets, visible and invisible, enter the inner Solar System has also been constant over this period.
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