In 2004, the Rosetta spacecraft was sent to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for the first ever long-term investigation of a comet. After its arrival in 2014, the spacecraft spent more than two years in immediate proximity to the comet. During these two years, the ROSINA Double Focusing Mass Spectrometer (DFMS) onboard Rosetta discovered a coma with an unexpectedly complex chemical composition that included many oxygenated molecules. Determining the exact cometary composition is an essential first step to understanding of the organic rich chemistry in star forming regions and protoplanetary disks that are ultimately conserved in cometary ices. In this study a joint approach of laboratory calibration and space data analysis was used to perform a detailed identification and quantification of CHO-compounds in the coma of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The goal was to derive the CHO-compound abundances relative to water for masses up to 100 u. For this study, the May 2015 post-equinox period represent the best bulk abundances of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. A wide variety of CHO-compounds were discovered and their bulk abundances were derived. Finally, these results are compared to abundances of CHO-bearing molecules in other comets, obtained mostly from ground-based observations and modelling.
@article{arxiv.2003.03967,
title = {CHO-bearing molecules in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko},
author = {Markus Schuhmann and Kathrin Altwegg and Hans Balsiger and Jean-Jacques Berthelier and Johan De Keyser and Stephen A. Fuselier and Sébastien Gasc and Tamas I. Gombosi and Nora Hänni and Martin Rubin and Thierry Sémon and Chia-Yu Tzou and Susanne F. Wampfler},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.03967},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
This document is the unedited Author's version of a Submitted Work that was subsequently accepted for publication in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry, copyright $\copyright$ American Chemical Society after peer review. To access the final edited and published work see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.9b00094