Explorations: Introduction to Astronomy (Arny), 6th Edition

Chapter 11: Meteors, Asteroids and Comets

Problems

1
Use Kepler's third law to find the semimajor axis of Halley's comet, given that its orbital period is 76 years.
2
With the result of problem 1 and the fact that for a very elliptical orbit the distance furthest from the Sun is roughly twice the semimajor axis, estimate how far from the Sun Halley's comet gets. What planet is about that same distance from the Sun? How does this distance compare with the distance to the Kuiper belt?
3
Use the formula for the kinetic energy of a moving body to estimate the energy of impact of a 1000-kilogram (roughly 1-ton) object hitting the Earth at 30 kilometers per second. Express your answer in kilotons of TNT, using the conversion that 1 kiloton is about 4 x 1012 joules. Note: Be sure to convert kilometers/second to meters/second.
4
Use Kepler's third law to determine the period of a comet whose orbit extends to 50,000 AU, within the inner Oort cloud.
5
Given that the temperature of a body decreases as the square root of its distance from the Sun increases, estimate the temperature of a comet nucleus in the Oort cloud. Take the temperature at 1 AU to be 300 Kelvin.
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