Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Sep 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.2310b&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #23.10
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Physico-chemical modeling is central to understand the important physical and chemical processes that operate in cometary comae. Photochemistry is a major source of ions and electrons that further initiate key gas-phase reactions, leading to the plethora of molecules and atoms seen in comets. The effects of photoelectrons that react via electron impact reactions are important to the overall ionization. Relevant physico-chemical processes are identified within a global modeling framework to understand observations and in situ measurements of comets and to provide valuable insights into the intrinsic properties of their nuclei.
Details of these processes are presented in the collision-dominated, inner coma of comet Machholz; including thermodynamics (e.g., temperature and velocity structure) and photo- and gas-phase chemistry (e.g., composition, gas and electron energetics) throughout this inner region. Prior model results have successfully accounted for the comet Halley water-group composition, in situ measurements of the PEPE instrument onboard the Deep Space 1 Mission to comet Borrelly, S2 in comet Hyakutake, and observations of C2, C3, CS, and NS in comet Hale-Bopp. This extensive modeling effort to investigate these important cometary processes is highly relevant to ground-based observations of comets and past, on going, and future spacecraft missions to these primitive objects.
Acknowledgements: We acknowledge funding and support from the SwRI Internal Research and Development Program, the NASA Discovery Data Analysis Program and the NSF Planetary Astronomy Program.
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