Fragmentation Hierarchy of Bright Sungrazing Comets and the Birth and Orbital Evolution of the Kreutz System

A back-and-forth orbit integration technique, developed for our previous investigation of the splitting of the parent of the sungrazers C/1882 R1 and C/1965 S1, is now applied in an effort to understand the history and orbital evolution of the Kreutz sungrazer system, starting with the birth of two subgroups, which show prom-inently among the bright members and whose inception dates back to the progenitor’s breakup into two superfragments. The integration technique is used to reproduce the motion of comet C/1843 D1—the second brightest sungrazer known and presumably the most massive surviving piece of superfragment I—from the motion of C/1882 R1—the brightest sungrazer on record and arguably the most massive surviving piece of superfragment II. Running the orbit of C/1882 R1 back to a.d. 326, the progenitor comet is found to have split at a heliocentric distance of 50 AU and nearly 30 yr before perihelion. The superfragments acquired separation velocities of 8 m s1 in opposite directions. Using the same technique, we show next that (1) the motions o