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Sep 15, 2009 01:23 PM | 6
The middle of the 20th century was an eventful time in terms of Earth's geopolitics. In the spring of 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was taking shape, and simmering tensions in Korea hinted at the war that would begin there the following year. Twelve years later, in the summer of 1961, President John F. Kennedy was in his first year of office and had already committed the U.S. to reaching the moon before the decade was out.
A few hundred million miles away, during that same interval of years, Jupiter had its own share of the action. The gas giant passed the time by borrowing a comet called 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu to form a temporary satellite, holding onto it for two orbits. That's the conclusion, anyway, of a study presented yesterday (pdf) at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany, by a team of researchers from Japan and the U.K.
A few other such Jovian events are known—in one case, the massive planet may have held onto its captive comet for more than half a century.
To uncover the 12-year rendezvous between Jupiter and Comet 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu, an icy body discovered in 1993, the research team, led by Katsuhito Ohtsuka of the Tokyo Meteor Network, tracked the orbits of likely comets back 100 years based on their known characteristics today.
From about May 1949 to July 1961, the group found, Comet 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu was pulled in by Jupiter's influence before escaping to its present orbit via a gravitationally stable zone known as a Lagrange point, where the gravitational influence of two bodies—in this case Jupiter and the sun—balance out.
The research on 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu was originally published in October 2008 in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Modeled orbit of Comet 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu around Jupiter (at center of diagram): Ohtsuka/Asher
Tags:
modeling,
comets
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6 Comments
Add CommentThe article says Jupiter may have held onto the comet for over 50 years. So was it twelve or more? In any case, it's quite fascinating how they tracked the orbits of comets back so far based only on current observations. Where exactly is the Lagrange point between Jupiter and the Sun? And what is Comet 147P's current orbit?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuote "A few OTHER such Jovian events are known" that would seem to imply a different comet to me and not the one which is detailed in the article, but that is just how I read the word "other", your mileage may vary. ;-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a side note the scale in the diagram is given in AU or Astronomical Units and at a guess from the drawing the L1 and L2 points are about 0.375AU, an AU is 149 598 000 kilometres, so 56 million kilometres would be my guess for the L1 and L2 points from Jupiter. I leave it for somebody else to to the research or the math to correct my estimate. :-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI sometimes wonder if would be possible to do this with out computers?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a story...Thanks... My wife took me into her Orbit in 1968 & I'm still there... I'm one of the lucky ones I guess !
Are we able to accurately plot the orbits of 3 or more bodies in space given we know their mass and velosity? thanks
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's very interesting to find the Lagrange point between planets and the Sun. That point might sound like a Neutral point, that if you can stand there you can use other technologies and benefit from the gravitational pull of other celestial objects to escape from Sun's gravity easier and travel through the space with the required initial speed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think it's a point that's worth to think about.