Heavy ion effects on cometary shocks

Abstract

The spacecraft flybys of comets have given us in-situ results on a different type of bow shock to that found at planets. Rather than flow around a hard ‘obstacle’ such as a planetary magnetosphere, the cometary bow shock is caused by the presence of pickup heavy ions in the flow. The structures produced are some of the most complex bow shocks in the solar system. In this review we compare results from the three comets visited by spacecraft to data, and relate the observations to relevant theory and simulations.