Rita Schulz - Böcker

Comets consist of the most primitive material in the solar system and to understand the earliest epoch of solar system formation, we must investigate the nature of this material. Much of what we know of comets presently comes from remote sensing using Earth-based telescopes. The Rosetta mission is poised to make a dramatic advance in our understanding of comets.

Comet nuclei are the most primitive bodies in the solar system. They have been created far away from the early Sun and it is supposed that their material has been altered the least since their formation. The workshop was bringing together representatives of several scientific communities in the fields of interstellar clouds, star-forming regions, the solar nebula, and comets. The intent was to formulate the current understanding and interconnectivity of the various source regions of comet nuclei and their associated compositions and orbital characteristics.The goal was to better understand the survival of cometary materials (grains, molecules, free radicals, and atoms) from extrasolar sources (circumstellar shells and molecular clouds), their modifications in the solar nebula, and the effects of their properties on the formation and early physical and thermal evolution of the macroscopic bodies, the comet nuclei, in the various subnebulae. Closely associated is their transport into the outer solar system, the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud. The distinction between direct measurements, in situ or by remote sensing, of cometary material properties and properties derived from indirect means, deduced from laboratory studies and theoretical deductions, was emphasized with the aim to guide future investigations. The book is intended to serve as guide for researchers and graduate students working in the field of planetology and solar system exploration. It should also help to influence the planning of scientific strategies for the encounter of the Rosetta spacecraft with Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

IAU Symposium 263 provides a state-of-the-art review of icy bodies in the Solar System, a topic crucial to understanding processes involved in the Solar System's formation, the consequences for water on planets, and ultimately, the habitable zones around other stars. Ice-rich planetesimals which form beyond the snow line are discussed, using an interdisciplinary approach. The main topics covered include: accretion of icy grains in the protoplanetary disk, the long-period comet flux and the Oort cloud population, transfer mechanisms of bodies from their source regions to the Sun's neighborhood, the physics and dynamics of trans-Neptunian objects, transition objects (comets and asteroids), cryovolcanism and modeling the interiors of icy bodies, and a review of past, present and future space missions. This volume gives a broad overview of the importance of these bodies, from comets up to liquid water on terrestrial planets, and the formation of ices in the Solar System.

Comet Hale-Bopp defines a milestone event for cometary science: it is the first "really big" comet observed with modern equipment on the ground and from space and due to that; it is considered the new reference object in cometary sciences. At the beginning of a new era in spacecraft exploration of comets and five years after Hale-Bopp's perihelion passage these proceedings of invited and contributed papers for IAU Colloquium 186 "Cometary Science after Hale-Bopp" review the state-of-the-art knowledge on comets, the icy, dusty and most primordial left-overs of the formation disk of our own solar system.

Comet Hale-Bopp defines a milestone event for cometary science: it is the first "really big" comet observed with modern equipment on the ground and from space. Due to this, it is considered the new reference object in cometary sciences. At the beginning of a new era in spacecraft exploration of comets and five years after Hale-Bopp's perihelion passage these proceedings of invited and contributed papers for the IAU Colloquium 186 "Cometary Science after Hale-Bopp" review the state-of-the-art knowledge on comets, the icy, dusty and most primordial left-overs of the formation disk of our own solar system.

Comet nuclei are the most primitive bodies in the solar system. They have been created far away from the early Sun and it is supposed that their material has been altered the least since their formation. The workshop was bringing together representatives of several scientific communities in the fields of interstellar clouds, star-forming regions, the solar nebula, and comets. The intent was to formulate the current understanding and interconnectivity of the various source regions of comet nuclei and their associated compositions and orbital characteristics.The goal was to better understand the survival of cometary materials (grains, molecules, free radicals, and atoms) from extrasolar sources (circumstellar shells and molecular clouds), their modifications in the solar nebula, and the effects of their properties on the formation and early physical and thermal evolution of the macroscopic bodies, the comet nuclei, in the various subnebulae. Closely associated is their transport into the outer solar system, the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud. The distinction between direct measurements, in situ or by remote sensing, of cometary material properties and properties derived from indirect means, deduced from laboratory studies and theoretical deductions, was emphasized with the aim to guide future investigations. The book is intended to serve as guide for researchers and graduate students working in the field of planetology and solar system exploration. It should also help to influence the planning of scientific strategies for the encounter of the Rosetta spacecraft with Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Comets consist of the most primitive material in the solar system and to understand the earliest epoch of solar system formation, we must investigate the nature of this material. The Rosetta mission is poised to make a dramatic advance in our understanding of comets.

Comet Hale-Bopp defines a milestone event for cometary science: it is the first "really big" comet observed with modern equipment on the ground and from space and due to that; it is considered the new reference object in cometary sciences. At the beginning of a new era in spacecraft exploration of comets and five years after Hale-Bopp's perihelion passage these proceedings of invited and contributed papers for IAU Colloquium 186 "Cometary Science after Hale-Bopp" review the state-of-the-art knowledge on comets, the icy, dusty and most primordial left-overs of the formation disk of our own solar system.