IAU Colloquium 168
Cometary Nuclei in Space and Time

Nanjing, China
May 18-22, 1998

Electronically-submitted Abstracts of Participants


Explosion of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacting on Jupiter
Ma Yuehua, Xu Pinxin, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China

The fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 entering the Jovian atmosphere were suffered ablation and dissociation as a result of interaction with the atmosphere, and then they exploded at the twinkle of an eye. A typical comet fragment is modeled as 1013 kg with density of 1.0g/cm3. Our results show that the fragment exploded below the ammonia cloud layer, near the 1-bar level, this can explain there are ammonia but no water in observation; our simple explosion model gives that the explosion can uplift the atmosphere to 5000km above the Jovian atmosphere, as observed, the angle of the covering area of the ejecta to Jupiter's center is about 10o.



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Created 28 Apr 1998. yfp.