Second alignment plane of solar system discovered

A study of comet motions indicates that the Solar System has a second alignment plane. Analytical investigation of the orbits of long-period comets shows that the aphelia of the comets, the point where they are farthest from the Sun, tend to fall close to either the well-known ecliptic plane where the planets reside or a newly discovered ‘empty ecliptic.’ This has important implications for models of how comets originally formed in the Solar System.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

Second alignment plane of solar system discovered

A study of comet motions indicates that the Solar System has a second alignment plane. Analytical investigation of the orbits of long-period comets shows that the aphelia of the comets, the point where they are farthest from the Sun, tend to fall close to either the well-known ecliptic plane where the planets reside or a newly discovered ‘empty ecliptic.’ This has important implications for models of how comets originally formed in the Solar System.

more…

“The ecliptic is inclined with respect to the disk of the Milky Way by about 60 degrees. The empty ecliptic is also inclined by 60 degrees, but in the opposite direction. Higuchi calls this the “empty ecliptic” based on mathematical nomenclature and because initially it contains no objects, only later being populated with scattered comets.”

Well that’s very peculiar and interesting.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Second alignment plane of solar system discovered

A study of comet motions indicates that the Solar System has a second alignment plane. Analytical investigation of the orbits of long-period comets shows that the aphelia of the comets, the point where they are farthest from the Sun, tend to fall close to either the well-known ecliptic plane where the planets reside or a newly discovered ‘empty ecliptic.’ This has important implications for models of how comets originally formed in the Solar System.

more…

Nah. ? Will read this later.

A dominant feature of comets is that, with the exception of short period comets close to the ecliptic, the distribution is pretty darn close to uniform across the whole celestial sphere.

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Second alignment plane of solar system discovered

A study of comet motions indicates that the Solar System has a second alignment plane. Analytical investigation of the orbits of long-period comets shows that the aphelia of the comets, the point where they are farthest from the Sun, tend to fall close to either the well-known ecliptic plane where the planets reside or a newly discovered ‘empty ecliptic.’ This has important implications for models of how comets originally formed in the Solar System.

more…

Nah. ? Will read this later.

A dominant feature of comets is that, with the exception of short period comets close to the ecliptic, the distribution is pretty darn close to uniform across the whole celestial sphere.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/aba94d/pdf

> Long-period comets coming from the Oort cloud are thought to be planetesimals formed in the planetary region on the ecliptic plane.

What? No they aren’t. Not unless the same can be said of globular clusters.

> We have investigated the orbital evolution of these bodies due to the Galactic tide.

Could that actually be possible?

> for initial eccentricities e near 1.

Oh good. They’ve made a mistake in the article title. I was hoping they had. They include e > 1 comets, ie. not periodic.

Real observations in figure below.

I’m surprised that there aren’t more comets known than this, although I am aware that a full 1,000 comets follow a single path, the Kreutz comets, so would appear on this diagram as a single point. Once you take the lines off (other than the single line from the ecliptic) and the colours off (coloured on galactic latitude), the result looks pretty darn random to me. There’s nothing special about galactic longitude 0 or 180 degrees.