Non-gravitational forces and masses of some long-period comets. The cases of Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake

Abstract

Abstract. By means of a simple non-gravitational force model of the cometary nucleus, which relies on the observed light curves assumed to be a good representation of the water sublimation rate, we estimate the masses of a sample of long-period comets (LPCs).A critical issue of our method is the assumption of a correlation between visual heliocentric magnitudes and water production rates. This is a necessary assumption because of the sparse observational data of gas production rates (with the exception of very few comets like Hale-Bopp or Hyakutake). In this regard we present here a new correlation for LPCs. We also present the preliminary results for the masses of comets Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake.