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University of KansasPlanetary Aeronomy and
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T. E. Cravens and T. I. Gombosi, Advances in Space Research, 33, 1968. doi: 10.1016/j.asr.2003.07.053, 2004.
Abstract. The nucleus of an active comet, such as comet Halley near its perihelion, produces large quantities of gas and dust. The resulting cometary atmosphere, or coma, extends more than a million kilometers into space, where it interacts with the solar wind. An "induced" cometary magnetosphere is a consequence of this interaction. Cometary ion pick-up and mass loading of the solar wind starts to take place at very large cometocentric distances. Eventually this mass loading leads to the formation of a weak cometary bow shock. Even closer to the nucleus, collisional processes, such as ion-neutral chemistry, become important. Other features of the magnetosphere of an active comet include a magnetic barrier, a magnetotail, and a diamagnetic cavity near the nucleus. X-ray emission from comets is produced by the interaction of the solar wind with cometary neutrals, and this topic is also discussed. A broad review of the cometary magnetosphere will be given in this paper.
PDF version of the entire paper (draft of final submission version).
Abstract with link to full article through
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Tizby Hunt-Ward tizby@ku.edu |