| Original Articles |
|
|
|
|
Explosion of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 Impacting on Jupiter |
| MA Yue-hua;XU Pin-xin |
| Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008 |
|
| Cite this article: |
|
MA Yue-hua, XU Pin-xin 1998 Chin. Phys. Lett. 15 772-774 |
|
|
|
|
Abstract The fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 entering the Jovian atmosphere suffered ablation and dissociation as a result of interaction with the atmosphere, and then exploded in the twinkle of an eye. A typical comet fragment is modeled as 1013 kg with a density of 1.0g/cm3. Our results show that the fragment exploded below the ammonia cloud layer, near the 1-bar level, which can explain why there was ammonia but no water in the observations. Our simple explosion model shows that the explosion could uplift the atmosphere to 5000km above the Jovian atmosphere, as observed, with the area covered by the ejecta to Jupiter's center making an angle of about 10º.
|
| Keywords:
96.50.Gn
96.30.Kf
|
|
|
Published: 01 October 1998
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Viewed |
|
|
|
Full text
|
|
|
|
|
Abstract
|
|
|
|
|
