New Methods for a Survey of Comet Coma Gas Production Rates

Details New Methods for a Survey of Comet Coma Gas Production Rates New Methods for a Survey of Comet Coma Gas Production Rates

Dec 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...211.5604l&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #211, #56.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.828

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We have been undertaking a program of comet long-slit spectroscopy with the Kast Dual Spectrograph on the 3-m Shane Telescope at Lick Observatory. We present coma gas production rates for CN, C2, C3, NH, and NH2 from Haser (1957, BSRSL, 43, 740) model fits to the data of example comets P/2006 T1 (Levy), C/2007 E1 (Garradd), and C/2007 E2 (Lovejoy). These three comets span a range of dynamical comet families. New techniques for long-slit data reduction and Haser model fitting are being employed systematically for the first time. Active comets commonly appear close to the Sun, where they must sometimes be observed in conditions of extreme twilight. The rapidly changing twilight sky resists the usual employment of separate sky frames for sky subtraction of the comet frames. Thus, we have developed a statistical method for subtracting the twilight sky within such extreme comet frames themselves. We also employ a method introduced by Fray et al. (2005, P&SS, 53, 1243) for finding Haser model scale lengths and their uncertainties. With unbiased testing of a range of parent- and daughter-species scale lengths, we can identify families of equally well-fitting scale lengths, as well as the best-fitting scale length pair, and compare them with ranges of scale lengths found in the literature. The total comet survey will improve our understanding of the diversity among comets, including unusual comets such as 96P/Machholz. This research is supported by NASA grant NNG05GG59G through the Planetary Astronomy program.

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