Investigation of outburst activity of comets as a base for revealing interplanetary meteor showers

Abstract

Cometary nuclei are made of frozen volatiles, which under heating by solar radiation are evaporating and forming head of a comet. Sunlight pressure is elongating the matter left the nucleus into a tail, which structure allows us to judge the character of volatile sublimation from the nucleus surface. Considerable part of the cometary nucleus surface is covered by heat isolating porous dust crust, that prevents the volatile evaporation from below the dust crust. The crash of dust crust is possible only under the exterior action. It is supposed that it is caused by impacts with interplanetary meteoroids. Caused by the impact sole volatile escape from the nucleus must lead to a short-term brightness outburst in the cometary head, and desintegration of the crust – to the leap in a general trend of cometary brightness measurement. If we plot on a 3d-Solar System map the places of observable cometary brightness outbursts, we can try to construct the orbits of such interplanetary meteor showers.

Keywords

• interplanetary meteor showers
• activity of cometary nucleus