Документ взят из кэша поисковой машины. Адрес оригинального документа : http://star.arm.ac.uk/~ambn/abstract228.html Дата изменения: Thu Oct 10 18:30:12 1996 Дата индексирования: Mon Oct 1 23:57:36 2012 Кодировка: Поисковые слова: universe

Results from a series of long-term numerical integrations of orbits centred on that of C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) are presented. Initially, 33 orbits taken from various sources were integrated in realistic models of the solar system for various time-scales about the present in the range (-3, +2) Myr and analyzed to assess the probability of different dynamical outcomes, such as a sungrazing state or the number of orbits since it was captured from a long-period orbit in the Oort cloud. Further integrations were performed using an ensemble of 26 orbits more closely clustered about the present orbit of the comet, based on a more accurate method of orbit determination. We find that the ensemble half-life for the comet to be captured or ejected is on the order of 0.5 Myr in the backward integrations and 1.2 Myr in the forward integrations, although a few members of our ensemble were captured during strong encounters with Jupiter within 10 revolutions. Comet Hale-Bopp has a probability of about 0.15 of evolving to a sungrazing end-state, and although not a `new' comet (in the sense of being recently captured from the Oort cloud) may be considered dynamically young.