Measuring HCN in Comet 2P/Encke

Details Measuring HCN in Comet 2P/Encke Measuring HCN in Comet 2P/Encke

Nov 2004

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004dps....36.3315w&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #36, #33.15; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 36, p.1146

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Scientific paper

We present the first measurement of HCN emission in Comet 2P/Encke. The comet was observed during its close approach to Earth over UT 2003 Nov 9 to 11 with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The J=4-> 3 transition at 354.506 GHz was observed to have an integrated line strength of 0.057 ± 0.011 K km/s. Using a Haser model we derive an HCN production rate of Q ≈ 1×1024 molecules/s. The production rate of CN near this time was Q ≈ 5×1024 molecules/s (Schleicher, priv. comm.). This implies HCN dissociation contributes only a small fraction of Encke's comatic CN. This fraction is smaller than that seen in the long-period comets which have a discrepancy between HCN and CN and smaller than that seen in the only other Jupiter-family comet with an HCN detection, 19P/Borrelly. CN must have another parent in addition to HCN in 2P/Encke. We also present upper limits for both the integrated line strength of the CO J=3-> 2 transition at 345.796 GHz and the 850-μ m continuum emission.

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