Article: New orbital model details comet gas effects. (nongravitational forces affecting comets' orbits)

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Each time a periodic comet revisits the inner solar system, it can experience the gentle effects of dust-bearing gas jets erupting on its sun-warmed surface. These so-called nongravitational forces can advance or retard a comet's date of return by hours or years. For example, Comet Swift-Tuttle confounded most predictions when it returned last year, indicating a shift of as much as 11 years from the orbit it would have followed if guided solely by the gravitational pull of the sun and planets (SN: 10/10/92, p.230).

In most cases, astronomers can estimate these nongravitational orbital shifts with fair accuracy, although the detailed physical explanation ...

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