Detectability of Sungrazing Comet Soft X-ray Irradiance

Abstract

Originating from the Oort cloud, some comets disappear to impact against the Sun or to split up by strong gravitational force. Then they don't go back to the Oort cloud. They are called sungrazing comets. The comets are detected by sublimation of ices and ejection of gas and dust through solar heat close to the Sun. There exists the charge transfer from heavy ions in the solar wind to neutral atoms in the cometary atmosphere by interaction with the solar wind. Cometary atoms would be excited to high electronic levels and their de-excitation would result in X-ray emission, or it would be scattering of solar X-ray emission by very small cometary grains. We calculated the X-ray emission applying the model suggested by Mendis & Flammer (1984) and Cravens (1997). In our estimation, the sungrazing comet whose nucleus size is about 1 km in radius might be detectable within a distance of 3 solar radius from the sun on soft X-ray solar camera.

Keywords

• comet
• X-ray
• solar wind