Inner Coma Radial Distributions of Molecular Radicals in the Comae of the Fragments of Comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3

Details Inner Coma Radial Distributions of Molecular Radicals in the Comae of the Fragments of Comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3 Inner Coma Radial Distributions of Molecular Radicals in the Comae of the Fragments of Comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.1503h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #15.03

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The 2006 apparition of comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3 (SW3) presented two unique opportunities for detailed study. SW3 was observed to break apart near perihelion in 1996 yet survived in the form of several sub-fragments that reappeared in 2001 and 2006, some of which exhibited gas production rates comparable to or greater than the original object. The high level of relative activity suggested the exposure of fresh ice from the breakup event and an opportunity to compare the relative abundances of volatiles from different pieces of the same nucleus with potentially different evolutionary histories. In addition to its multiple components and their high activity levels, the close perigee of the nuclei (0.75 AU) offered an unprecedented opportunity to probe the inner coma photochemistry of comet volatiles. We describe here results from observations of the fragments of SW3 that were obtained using wide-field Hydra integral field spectrometer at the WIYN telescope at Kitt Peak during the period leading up to perigee. The Hydra is capable of positioning 100 3-arcsecond fibers at different locations over a 1 degree field. For SW3 the spectrometer was configured to provide low dispersion spectra from 350-650 nm in each fiber over a series of concentric rings extending up to 23 arcminutes from a central nucleus. From these spectra we have extracted the brightness of several key diagnostic species, mapped their radial distributions with increasing cometocentric distance, and utilized well-tested radial expansion models to determine the parent-daughter scale lengths. We discuss the implications of the best-fit model parameters for the expected lifetimes of short-lived potential parents for different carbon bearing species and for the relative compositions of the fragments.

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