Stochasticity of comet P/Slaughter-Burnham

Three comets are now known to be at or near the 1/1 resonance with Jupiter: P/Slaughter-Burnham, P/Boethin and the newly discovered P/Ge-Wang. Although details of the individual orbits differ, the three comets have very similar dynamical behavior: their orbits show many transitions between the different types of resonant motion (satellite libration, anti-satellite libration, and circulating motion). The stochastic character of such cometary orbits, mainly due to encounters with Jupiter is investigated using Lyapunov Characteristic Indicators. For each comet of the group, we study the influences on the stochasticity of initial eccentricity, inclination, longitude of node, and l-l(sub J) (mean longitude of comet minus mean longitude of Jupiter). We present here our first results for P/Slaughter-Burnham.