The Volatile Chemistry Of Jupiter-family Comets Determined From High-resolution Infrared Spectroscopy

Details The Volatile Chemistry Of Jupiter-family Comets Determined From High-resolution Infrared Spectroscopy The Volatile Chemistry Of Jupiter-family Comets Determined From High-resolution Infrared Spectroscopy

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.1513d&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #15.13

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The chemistry of Jupiter-family comets (JFCs) has been extensively studied at optical wavelengths using spectroscopic and photometric techniques. However, the coma species detected at optical wavelengths are daughter and granddaughter photodissociation products that are often not easily related to species present in the nucleus. Because JFCs are generally of moderate productivity, studies of their parent volatile chemistries have lagged owing to sensitivity issues. Recently, studies at radio and infrared wavelengths have revealed the parent volatile chemistry in a small group of JFCs. Here, we report and compare recent results on the chemistry of JFCs using high-resolution infrared spectroscopy.
The main goals of this research are to: (1) chemically characterize JFCs using high-resolution infrared spectroscopy in order to build a taxonomy based on parent volatile composition, (2) determine if the parent volatile chemistry of JFCs is consistent with formation conditions or evolutionary processing history, and (3) compare abundances of daughter fragments (e.g., C2, CN, NH, NH2) and their suspected parents (e.g., C2H2, C2H6, HCN, NH3) in JFCs whose chemistries were measured at both infrared and optical wavelengths. Understanding the parent sources of daughter fragments in comets not only provides information on the common infrared/optical database but may also give clues to the parent volatile chemistry in the large number of comets observed only at optical wavelengths. Because JFCs are the most practical mission targets, chemical composition can be one discriminator in determining desirable future targets. Furthermore, determining the range of chemical diversity within the JFC population can help put results of previous missions (e.g. Deep Impact, Stardust) in better context. This work was supported by the NASA Planetary Astronomy and Planetary Atmospheres Programs.

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