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Origin and Evolution of the Cometary Reservoirs

Dones, Luke; Brasser, Ramon; Kaib, Nathan +1 more

Comets have three known reservoirs: the roughly spherical Oort Cloud (for long-period comets), the flattened Kuiper Belt (for ecliptic comets), and, surprisingly, the asteroid belt (for main-belt comets). Comets in the Oort Cloud were thought to have formed in the region of the giant planets and then placed in quasi-stable orbits at distances of t…

Cometary Isotopic Measurements

Jehin, Emmanuël; Engrand, Cécile; Sheridan, Simon +12 more

Isotopic ratios in comets provide keys for the understanding of the origin of cometary material, and the physical and chemical conditions in the early Solar Nebula. We review here measurements acquired on the D/H, ¹⁴N/¹⁵N, ¹⁶O/¹⁸O, ¹²C/¹³C, and ³²S/³⁴S ratios i…

The Composition of Comets

Mumma, Michael J.; Cochran, Anita L.; Schleicher, David G. +10 more

This paper is the result of the International Cometary Workshop, held in Toulouse, France in April 2014, where the participants came together to assess our knowledge of comets prior to the ESA Rosetta Mission. In this paper, we look at the composition of the gas and dust from the comae of comets. With the gas, we cover the various taxonomic studie…

Constraints from Comets on the Formation and Volatile Acquisition of the Planets and Satellites

Hartogh, P.; Mousis, O.; Marty, B. +4 more

Comets play a dual role in understanding the formation and evolution of the solar system. First, the composition of comets provides information about the origin of the giant planets and their moons because comets formed early and their composition is not expected to have evolved significantly since formation. They, therefore serve as a record of c…

Laboratory Studies Towards Understanding Comets

Hartogh, Paul; Marboeuf, Ulysse; Mousis, Olivier +13 more

This review presents some of the recent advancements in our understanding of comets facilitated by laboratory studies, need for new laboratory simulations, and predictions for future explorations. With the spacecraft Rosetta at the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a large volume of science data is expected to follow early results that have been pu…

The Subsurface Structure and Density of Cometary Nuclei

Lamy, P. L.; Toth, I.; Herique, A.

Little is known about the internal structure and density of cometary nuclei. Indirect evidences available so far are not compelling and these questions essentially remain a matter of speculation. It is therefore important to fully exploit the potential sources of information and this is particularly the case of radar observations which have the ca…