Observations of Comet Kohoutek (1973f) with a Ground-Based Fabry-Perot Spectrometer

Extract

Between 1973 December 1 and 1974 February 2, optical emission lines from the gas cloud surrounding comet Kohoutek were observed using a double Fabry-Perot etalon spectrometer at Kitt Peak National Observatory. The spectrometer had a resolving power of 40,000, corresponding to a velocity resolution of about 7.5 km sec^-1. With this resolution it was possible to use the cometearth relative velocity to resolve faint cometary H_α λ6563, [01] λ6300 and other emission lines from geocoronal and airglow emissions and to study the cometary line profiles in order to obtain information about the composition, effective temperatures, outflow velocities, and production rates of atoms and ions in the cometary envelope.