Related papers: Atomic Oxygen in the Comae of Comets
An infrared L- and M-band spectral survey, performed toward the young planetary nebula NGC 7027 with the iSHELL instrument on NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF), has revealed more than 20 vibrational lines of the molecules HeH$^+$,…
3I/ATLAS is the third confirmed interstellar object to visit our Solar System, and only the second to display a clear coma. Infrared spectroscopy with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) provides the opportunity to measure its coma…
We report on a Chandra line spectrum observation of the O supergiant, Zeta Orionis (O9.7 Ib). A 73.4 ks HETGS observation shows a wide range of ionization stages and line strengths over the wavelength range of 5 to 26 A. The observed…
Two papers recently reported the detection of gaseous nickel and iron in the comae of over 20 comets from observations collected over two decades, including interstellar comet 2I/Borisov. To evaluate the state of the laboratory data in…
Classical hot cores are rich in molecular emission, and they show a high abundance of complex organic molecules (COMs). The emergence of molecular complexity is poorly constrained in the early evolution of hot cores. Using the Atacama Large…
Molecular oxygen has been detected in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko with abundances in the 1-10% range by the ROSINA-DFMS instrument on board the Rosetta spacecraft. Here we find that the radiolysis of icy grains in…
Sensitive spectral observations made in two frequency bands near 6.0 and 17.6 GHz are described for Orion and W51. Using frequency switching we were able to achieve a dynamic range in excess of 10,000 without fitting sinusoidal or…
Orion KL has served as a benchmark for spectral line searches throughout the (sub)millimeter regime. The main goal is to systematically study spectral characteristics of Orion KL in the 1.3 cm band. We carried out a spectral line survey…
We report the detection and investigate the properties of high-excitation lambda-doubling line emission of hydroxyl (OH) detected towards three asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars (W Hya, R Dor, and IK Tau) using ALMA. The OH lines are…
Recent measurements carried out at comet 67P/C-G with the ${\it Rosetta}$ probe revealed that molecular oxygen, O$_2$, is the fourth most abundant molecule in comets. Models show that O$_2$ is likely of primordial nature, coming from the…
The ratios of the three stable oxygen isotopes 16O, 17O and 18O on Earth and, as far as we know in the solar system, show variations on the order of a few percent at most, with a few outliers in meteorites. However, in the interstellar…
We present high angular resolution Submillimeter Array observations ofthe outbursting Jupiter family comet 17P/Holmes on 2007 October 26-29, achieving a spatial resolution of 2.5", or ~3000 km at the comet distance. The observations…
We present the results of imaging photometric and long-slit spectroscopic observations of comet 2P/Encke performed at the heliocentric distance 0.56 au, geocentric distance 0.65 au, and phase angle 109.2 deg on November 4, 2013 and at 1.05…
Using archival Chandra observations of 19 LINERs we explore the X-ray properties of their inner kiloparsec to determine the origin of their nuclear X-ray emission, to investigate the presence of an AGN, and to identify the power source of…
We mapped quiescent 807 GHz CO(7-6) emission from Orion along a strip in RA extending from 0.7 pc west to 1.2 pc east of Ori theta 1C. The lines arise in warm gas with T > 40 K. The line brightness temperature is > 160 K in the di- rection…
In order to improve our understanding of the kinetics of the cometary coma, theoretical studies of the major reactive collisions in these environments are needed. Deep in the collisional coma, inelastic collisions between thermal electrons…
As part of the first far-IR line survey towards Orion KL, we present the detection of seven new rotationally excited OH Lambda-doublets (at 48, 65, 71, 79, 98 and 115 um). Observations were performed with the Long Wavelength Spectrometer…
We report on photometry and high resolution spectroscopy of the chemically peculiar Jupiter-family Comet (hereafter JFC) 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. Comet 21P is a well known member of the carbon-chain depleted family but displays also a…
We report high resolution imaging of a prominent cometary globule in the Helix nebula in the CO J=1-0 (2.6 mm) and H2 v=1-0 S(1) (2.12 micron) lines. The observations confirm that globules consist of dense condensations of molecular gas…
The chemical composition of comets is frequently assumed to be directly provided by the observations of the abundances of volatile molecules in the coma. The present work aims to determine the relationship between the chemical composition…