anita@utastro.UUCP (Anita Cochran) (12/20/85)
I have received several mail requests from people who wanted references
about the Oort cloud and how it formed. The following list of references
is a list of fairly technical papers in, sometimes, obscure places but
these are the referecnes I have. Since many of my copies of these
papers are of the preprint variety, I do not have very exact references.
Sorry.
An excellent review is:
"Dynamical History of the Oort Cloud" by P. Weissman in the book "Comets"
edited by L. Wilknening, U. of Arizona Press, 1982.
Another good paper is:
"Evolution of Long- and Short-Period Orbits" by E. Everhart in the same book.
More specific papers include:
"Evolution of Comet Orbits Under the Perturbing Influence of the Giant
Planets and Nearby Stars" by J. Fernandez, Icarus 42 p 406, 1980.
"The Mass of the Oort Cloud" by P. Weissman, Astronomy and Astrophysics
118, p.90, 1983.
"Cometary Showers and Unseen Solar Companions" by P. Weissman, in Nature,
1983 or 1984.
And the Original paper:
"The Structure of the cometary cloud surrounding the solar system and
a hypothesis concerning its origin" by J. Oort, Bulletin of the
Astronomical Society of the Netherlands 11, p.91, 1950.
Also, of interest might be a paper on the periodic extinctions (or lack
thereof) attributed to comets and Nemesis:
"Terrestrial Impactors at Geological Boundary Events: Comets or Asteroids?"
by P. Weissman, in Nature, 1985.
Sorry these are such technical papers. You can probably find these in the
library of a major university (especially if it has an astronomy department)
but will be unlikely to find any but Nature in even good public libraries.
--
Anita Cochran uucp: {noao, ut-sally, ut-ngp}!utastro!anita
arpa: anita@astro.UTEXAS.EDU
snail: Astronomy Dept., The Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX, 78712
at&t: (512) 471-1471