Departmental Colloquium
- Title
- Hamilton-Jacobi Trajectories of Comets Kohoutek and ISON: A Novel Approach to Celestial Dynamics
- Guest Speaker
- Prof. M. Howard Lee
- Guest Affiliation
- UGA Physics And Astronomy
- Guest Affiliation Url
- https://www.physast.uga.edu
- When
- Thursday, January 28, 2016 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Location
- Physics Auditorium (Room 202)
- Details
- There is a class of comets which visit the solar system once and never return. These events are rare, occurring but once or twice a century. Kohoutek observed in 1973 and ISON in 2012 belong to this class. These remarkable comets are physically characterized by the eccentricity e very nearly 1. Thus their trajectories would seem of special interest to celestial dynamics. By Hamilton-Jacobi theory we have obtained a general solution for the trajectory in a two-body solar system. If e<1, the solution contains Kepler's three laws. If e>1, it yields an analog of Kepler's law 2, not previously known perhaps. The trajectories for the two special comets are obtained by taking the e-->1 limit on the general solution. By a "horizon singularity" one can determine how they disappear from the solar system. By this singularity one can identify this class of comets as they approach the solar system.