The Galactic Disk Tidal Force: Simulating the Observed Oort Cloud Comets

Abstract

In previous papers (Prȩtka and Dybczyński, 1994; Dybczyński and Prȩtka, 1996) we presented detailed analysis of selected examples of the long-term evolution of the orbit of Oort cloud comets under the influence of the galactic disk tidal force, as well as some statistical characteristics of the simulated observable comet population. This paper presents further improvements in our Monte Carlo simulation programme which allow us to represent in a better way the real processes of production of observable comets due to galactic perturbations.In our second paper (Dybczyński and Prȩtka, 1996), following some other authors (see for example Matese and Whitman, 1989), we treated a comet as observable when its osculating perihelion distance decreased below some adopted observability limit (5 AU in our case). Limiting the investigation to the evolution of osculating elements allowed us to use very fast and efficient averaged Hamiltonian equations of motion in our simulation. However, further detailed analysis of the problem showed that the adopted observability definition was insufficient: what makes a comet observable is not its osculating perihelion distance but its true distance from the Sun, smaller than some adopted threshold value. It may happen that when the osculating perihelion distance is at its smallest, the comet is around its aphelion distance.