Study of a Particular Model of Encounter Between a Comet and a Planet

The objective of this paper is to develop a simple model of an encounter between a comet and a planet, with a subsequent capture or an escape, and to study the potential consequences. The hypothetical scenario is as follows: a comet with a conic orbit meets close to one of its vertices (located near the ecliptic plane), a jovian planet, and transforms its orbit. There are two hypotheses which are made for the shock: this vertex becomes one of the final vertices and the orbital plane of the comet is unchanged during the encounter as it was the case for Brooks 2 in 1886. In this model, it was able to find an equation which was then used to obtain the pre‐ and post‐encounter orbits elements and the kind of orbit (ellipse, hyperbola, parabola) with respect to the initial inclination. The numerical experiments with the observed comets often provide pre‐encounter orbits with an aphelion point located near another jovian planet farther from the Sun, and so on with sometimes several planets, or with an aphelion point located beyond the Pluto orbit. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.