System of Long-Period Comets as Indicator of the Large Planetary Body on the Periphery of the Solar System

摘要

We study some particular aspects of the hypothesis about the existence of a highly inclined massive celestial body at a distance of 250-400 au. The analysis covers 1249 long-period comets (LPCs) observed up to 2017, having q and Q greater than 0.1 au and 30 au respectively. A plane or planes around which the concentration of perihelia occurs have been searched. The search for such planes has been carried out for groups of LPCs, separated by clusters in T (discovery date), e, q, H (absolute magnitude), Q, 1/a(ori) ("original" a), etc. In almost all cases two types of planes or zones have been detected: the first one is very close to the ecliptic, the other one has the parameters: i(p) = 86 degrees , Omega(p) = 271.degrees 7. According to the tested hypothesis there is a massive perturber at a distance of 250-400 au from the Sun. We show that the number of aphelia and distant nodes of long-period comet orbits within this interval (250-400 au) significantly exceeds the expected value. The distributions of Q and distant comet nodes may signal the presence of a massive perturber near 300 au. We have estimated that the most probable orbital elements of the hypothetical planet are a = 339 +/- 34 au, e = 0.16 +/- 0.02 , omega = 57 degrees +/- 15 degrees , Omega = 272.degrees 7 +/- 3 degrees , i = 86 degrees +/- 2 degrees.