Course description
Observations of comets; cometary orbits, perturbations and evolution of cometary orbits, the Tisserand parameter; the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt; thermal and chemical processes: heat conduction, crystallization of amorphous water ice, phase transitions, sublimation; porosity and gas flow in the interior of comets; the equations of comet evolution: energy and mass conservation; numerical solution methods; properties of comet nuclei: composition, thermal conductivity, permeability, pore size distribution; the effect of dust on the evolution of comets, the dust tail; the effect of radioactivity on the early evolution; space missions to comets.
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