A Search for OH Outgassing from Icy Asteroid (24) Themis

Details A Search for OH Outgassing from Icy Asteroid (24) Themis A Search for OH Outgassing from Icy Asteroid (24) Themis

Oct 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.3920l&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #39.20; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.1036

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

1

Scientific paper

(24) Themis is a Main-Belt asteroid and the largest member of a family that includes at least two Main-Belt Comets. Recent reports have announced the existence of water ice on Themis's surface (Rivkin and Emery 2010, Campins et al. 2010). This suggests that Themis may itself possess a faint gas coma, where sublimated water would photo-dissociate into OH. We report here radio and UV observational searches for OH emission around Themis, made using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) 100-m Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and with the Lowell Observatory 1.1-m Hall Telescope. Despite the wide coverage of ice on Themis's surface, the asteroid did not appear active, and we did not detect the emission in either wavelength regime. The most sensitive 3σ upper-limit suggests Themis has a (water) gas production rate less than 1x1028 molecules/s. This result can constrain the physical state, temperature, and durability of Themis's ice.

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