The chemistry of comets

Details The chemistry of comets The chemistry of comets

Jul 1988

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1988rspta.325..509d&link_type=abstract

(Royal Society, Discussion on the Solar System: Chemistry as a Key to its Origin, London, England, July 15, 16, 1987) Royal Soci

Computer Science

33

Chemical Composition, Comets, Carbon Monoxide, Comet Tails, Cosmic Dust, Halley'S Comet, Water

Scientific paper

In comets, most elements seem to be present in their cosmic abundances. This includes the metals whose abundances are the same as in chondrites, but also the light elements, C, N, O, S that are the same as in the Sun; only hydrogen (and presumably helium and neon) is depleted by a factor close to 1000. In the bright comets of the 1970s, three-quarters of the cosmic abundance of carbon was found to be missing from the gaseous fraction. The missing carbon has now been found in Comet Halley: it was in the large organic fraction representing 33% of the cometary dust. Water remains the major constituent being 80% of the volatile ices. Formic acid, formaldehyde, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide explain together more than 13% of the rest of the volatiles. The last 7% include the parent molecules of the radicals excited by fluorescence and observed in the traditional spectra, like hydrogen cyanide HCN (for CN), probably acetylene C2C2 (for C2) and cyclopropadiene C3H2 (for C3).

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