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Article: The intrinsic distribution and selection bias of long-period cometary orbits.
- Article from:
- Journal of the American Statistical Association
- Article date:
- September 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 American Statistical Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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1. INTRODUCTION
The orbits of periodic comets are elliptical, with the sun at one focus. Two important features of a cometary orbit are the perihelion direction (the direction from the sun to the point of closest approach of the comet) and the directed normal (the direction normal to the orbit, the sense of rotation of the comet being taken into account by, say, a right-hand rule). Note that the perihelion direction and the directed normal are both directions, that is, unit vectors. There are astronomical reasons for believing that observations of cometary orbits are subject to considerable selection effects. Thus interest lies in the intrinsic distribution of ...