English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Zendy Plus

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Zendy Tools

Zendy Open

I investigate the nature of the transient nebulous companions to thesungrazing comet C/1882 R1, known as the Great September Comet. The featureswere located several degrees to the southwest of the comet's head and reportedindependently by four observers, including J. F. J. Schmidt and E. E. Barnard,over a period of ten days nearly one month after perihelion, when the comet was0.7 AU to 1 AU from the Sun. I conclude that none of the nebulous companionswas ever sighted more than once and that, contrary to his belief, Schmidtobserved unrelated objects on the four consecutive mornings. Each nebulouscompanion is proposed to have been triggered by a fragment at most a few tensof meters across, released from the comet's nucleus after perihelion and seenonly because it happened to be caught in the brief terminal outburst, when itsmass was suddenly shattered into a cloud of mostly microscopic debris duepossibly to rotational bursting triggered by sublimation torques. Thefragment's motion was affected by a strong outgassing-driven nongravitationalacceleration with a significant out-of-plane component. Although fragmentationevents were common, only a small fraction of nebulous companions was detectedbecause of their transient nature. The observed brightness of the nebulouscompanions is proposed to have been due mainly to C2 emissions, with acontribution from scattering of sunlight by the microscopic dust. By theirnature, the fragments responsible for the nebulous companions bear a strongresemblance to the dwarf Kreutz sungrazers detected with the coronagraphsaboard the SOHO space probe. Only their fragmentation histories are differentand the latter display no terminal outburst, a consequence of extremely shortlifetimes of the sublimating icy and refractory material in the Sun's corona.

Enigmatic Nebulous Companions to the Great September Comet of 1882 As SOHO-Like Kreutz Sungrazers Caught in Terminal Outburst