Related papers: Optical spectroscopy of comets
As comets journey into the inner solar system, they deliver particulates and volatile gases into their comae that reveal the most primitive materials in the solar system. Cometary dust particles provide crucial information for assessing the…
When viewed from Earth, most of what we observe of a comet is dust. The influence of solar radiation pressure on the trajectories of dust particles depends on their cross-section to mass ratio. Hence solar radiation pressure acts like a…
Exocomets are small bodies releasing gas and dust which orbit stars other than the Sun. Their existence was first inferred from the detection of variable absorption features in stellar spectra in the late 1980s using spectroscopy. More…
Remote investigations of the ancient solar system matter has been traditionally carried out through the observations of long-period (LP) comets that are less affected by solar irradiation than the short-period counterparts orbiting much…
Multi-wavelength spectroscopy can be used to constrain the dust and gas properties in debris disks. Circumstellar dust absorbs and scatters incident stellar light. The scattered light is sometimes resolved spatially at visual and…
The proposed CUBES spectrograph for ESO's Very Large Telescope will be an exceptionally powerful instrument for the study of comets. The gas coma of a comet contains a large number of emission features in the near-UV range covered by CUBES…
Comets are important "eyewitnesses" of Solar System formation and evolution. Important tests to determine the chemical composition and to study the physical processes in cometary nuclei and coma need data in the UV range of the…
In order to understand the origin and evolution of comets, one must decipher the processes that formed and processed cometary ice and dust. Cometary materials have diverse physical and chemical properties and are mixed in various ways.…
Comets hold the key to the understanding of our solar system, its formation and its evolution, and to the fundamental plasma processes at work both in it and beyond it. A comet nucleus emits gas as it is heated by the sunlight. The gas…
A fundamental question in cometary science is whether the different dynamical classes of comets have different chemical compositions, which would reflect different initial conditions. From the ground or Earth orbit, radio and infrared…
The composition of cometary ices provides key information on the thermal and chemical properties of the outer parts of the protoplanetary disk where they formed 4.6 Gy ago. This chapter reviews our knowledge of composition of cometary comae…
We present a statistical approach to assess the dust environment for a yet unknown comet (or when its parameters are known only with large uncertainty). This is of particular importance for missions such as ESA's Comet Interceptor mission…
In this chapter, we provide a review of radiative processes in cometary atmospheres spanning a broad range of wavelengths, from radio to X-rays. We focus on spectral modeling, observational opportunities, and anticipated challenges in the…
Comets are made of volatile and refractory material and naturally experience various degrees of sublimation as they orbit around the Sun. This gas release, accompanied by dust, represents what is traditionally described as activity.…
Far ultraviolet observations of comets yield information about the energetic processes that dissociate the sublimated gases from their primitive surfaces. Understanding which emission processes are dominant, their effects on the observed…
Most comets are volatile-rich bodies that have recently entered the inner solar system following long-term storage in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud reservoirs. These reservoirs feed several distinct, short-lived "small body"…
Except in a few cases cosmic dust can be studied in situ or in terrestrial laboratories, essentially all of our information concerning the nature of cosmic dust depends upon its interaction with electromagnetic radiation. This chapter…
Radio observations from decimetric to submillimetric wavelengths are now a basic tool for the investigation of comets. Spectroscopic observations allow us i) to monitor the gas production rate of the comets, by directly observing the water…
The Oort cloud, a collection of icy bodies orbiting the sun at roughly $10^{3}$ AU to $10^{5}$ AU, is believed to be the source of the long-period comets observed in the inner solar system. Although its existence was predicted nearly 70…
The signal measured by an astronomical spectrometer may be due to radiation from a multi-component mixture of plasmas with a range of physical properties (e.g. temperature, Doppler velocity). Confusion between multiple components may be…