《学年度第一学期工作总结撰写》-(课件).ppt

The Chemistry of Comet Hale-Bopp Wendy Hawley Journal Club April 6, 2006 Paper What is a Comet? A small (50km nucleus) icy body orbiting the Sun in a highly elliptical orbit Anatomy of a comet: Historical Significance Scientific Significance Comets thought to contain pristine material Debate over origin of comets: Interstellar material? Solar nebula? Chemical composition of a comet gives clues about solar system formation Previous Work Biver et al. 1999 - production rates Schleicher et al. 1998 - comet properties Greenberg 1982 - interstellar origin theory Lewis Prinn 1980 - solar nebula affected composition Several papers about production rates in other comets, most notably Hyakutake and Halley Comet Hale Bopp Discovered in 1995 by Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp Named “the Great Comet of 1997” Perihelion: April 1, 1997, 0.91AU Scope of Paper Use spectroscopy to determine chemical composition of Hale-Bopp Compare to composition of interstellar clouds Answer questions about the origin of comets, and the origin of our solar system Observations Taken during February to April 1997 Identified six new species from spectra: HC3N, SO, HCOOH, SO2, NH2CHO, HCOOCH3 HNCO and OCS also confirmed Molecular Production Rates and Abundances Molecular column density: Assumes optical thinness nu calculated using local thermal equilibrium (LTE) approximation Local densities of parent and daughter species found with Haser’s model For some species, more in-depth modeling was done, yielding similar results to LTE Sulfur Species [SO]: 0.3% and [SO2]: 0.2% relative to water SO abundance could vary from comet to comet [SO]/[SO2]~1.6 - is SO2 only parent? Sulfur Species (cont.) [OCS]: 0.4% relative to water In agreement with value found for Hyakutake (Gérard et al. 1998) [S]/[O]: 0.02 (solar system value) N- and CHO-bearing Species In agreement with upper limits for other comets (Crovisier et al. 1993) HC3N, NH2CHO and other species have low abundances with respect to NH3 New CHO species ha