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Molecules in Comets: An ISM-Solar System Connection?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2016

William M. Irvine  and
Edwin A. Bergin
William M. Irvine
Affiliation:
Astronomy Department, University of Massachusetts, 619 Lederle Graduate Research Center, Amherst, MA 01003, USA
Edwin A. Bergin
Affiliation:
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

Abstract

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Our knowledge of the volatile composition of comets has advanced considerably since the last IAU Astrochemistry Symposium, in large part due to the apparition of comet Hale-Bopp and its study with both new ground-based instruments and from spacecraft. Some 23 or 24 coma molecules are now known which are probably, at least in part, volatile constituents of the nucleus. Relative abundances have been measured for rarer isotopomers of molecules containing 13C, 15N, 34S, and D, and significant isotopic fractionation is observed for D-containing species. There are striking similarities in both relative abundances of molecular constituents and in isotopic fractionation between material in dense interstellar clouds and that in cometary comae. Whether this indicates that cometary nuclei consist of relatively unprocessed interstellar matter is less clear, since the observed coma composition is not simply related to the nuclear composition, and since recent chemical models of the outer solar nebula mimic interstellar chemistry in important respects.

Type
Part 8. Comets
Information
Symposium - International Astronomical Union , Volume 197: Astrochemistry: From Molecular Clouds to Planetary Systems , 2000 , pp. 447 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 2000 

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