A Chemical Survey of 73 Comets Conducted at McDonald Observatory

Details A Chemical Survey of 73 Comets Conducted at McDonald Observatory A Chemical Survey of 73 Comets Conducted at McDonald Observatory

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008dps....40.1602g&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #40, #16.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.411

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

A Chemical Survey of 73 Comets Conducted at McDonald Observatory
We present a spectroscopic survey of 73 comets to investigate how compositional diversity depends on comet type, an important step for understanding the conditions of the early solar system. All observations were conducted at McDonald Observatory over a period of 26 years and used the Intensified Dissector Scanner (IDS) spectrograph 1981-1989 (wavelength range of 3500 to 6500 Å and R = λ/Δλ= 365) and the Large Cassegrain Spectrograph (LCS), 1986-present (with wavelength range 3000 to 5700 Å and R = 550). Column densities for 7 molecules were measured: OH, NH, CN, C3, CH, C2 (Δv=1, Δv=0) and NH2. Production rates were found by applying the Haser model to the observed column densities. Production rates relative to CN were used to compare chemical composition among the comets. In this paper we will discuss the trends of production rates and production rate ratios with heliocentric distance. We find that some comets are compositionally different than the vast majority of comets. We show production rate trends as a function of comet type.
This work was supported by NASA Grant NNG04G162G and predecessor grants.

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