STOCHASTICITY OF COMET P GE-WANG

Three comets are now known to be at or near the 1/1 resonance with Jup iter: P/Slaughter-Burnham, P/Boethin and P/Ge-Wang. Although details o f the individual orbits differ, the three comets have very similar gen eral dynamic behaviour: their orbits show many transitions between the different types of resonant motion (satellite libration, anti-satelli te libration and circulating motion). The stochastic character of such cometary orbits, mainly due to encounters with Jupiter, is investigat ed using Lyapunov Characteristic Indicators. For each comet of the gro up, we study the influences of initial mean anomaly, eccentricity and inclination on the stochasticity of the orbit. The motions of P/Slaugh ter-Burnham and P/Boethin have been investigated previously. We presen t here our first results for P/Ge-Wang.