Collisional rates and impact velocities of short-period comets with interplanetary particles

Distributions of collision velocities between short-period comets and particles in the asteroid belt are computed for a sample of 159 objects. For every comet, the mean intrinsic collision probability and the mean collision velocity were obtained. The mean values for the complete sample are 〈Pi〉=1.51×10−18 km2 year−1 and 〈vcol〉=10.86 km s−1, and the results for the observable and lost comet samples are: 〈Pi〉=1.45×10−18 km−2 year−1, 〈vcol〉=10.45 km s−1, and 〈Pi〉=1.88×10−18 km−2 year−1, 〈vcol〉=12.78 km s−1, respectively. The results obtained show that the collisions occur over a wide and asymmetric range of velocities, and the distributions for individual objects are completely different from each other and often contain fine structure, irregularities and spikes