The size, mass, mass loss and age of Halley's comet

Abstract

Halley's comet (1910 II, 1982i) has a D2pv value of 5.90±0.33 km2, where D km is the diameter of the nucleus and pv is the geometric albedo. The mass of the nucleus is 7.5×1015ρpv-1.5g, where ρ is the density. Reasonable assumptions yield diameter and mass values of 9.4 km and 2.2×1017g. In the 1910 apparition the comet lost a mass of 2.8×1014g which is equivalent to an absolute magnitude change of 9×10-4 per apparition. The mass of the meteor stream, produced by the decay of P/Halley, is consistent with the statement that the comet has had 2300 previous close passages of the Sun.