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| Titel |
Modeling the neutral gas and dust coma of Comet 1P/Halley |
| VerfasserIn |
Martin Rubin, Valeriy M. Tenishev, Michael R. Combi, Kenneth C. Hansen, Tamas I. Gombosi, Kathrin Altwegg  , Hans Balsiger |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2010
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 12 (2010) |
| Datensatznummer |
250037637
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The neutral gas environment of a comet is largely influenced by dissociation of parent
molecules created at the surface of the comet and collisions of all the involved species. We
compare the results from a kinetic model of the neutral cometary environment with
measurements from the Neutral Mass Spectrometer (NMS) and the Dust Impact Detection
System (DIDSY) onboard the Giotto spacecraft which flew-by at comet 1P/Halley in 1986.
We further show that our model is in good agreement to measurements obtained by the
International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE), sounding rocket experiments, and the International
Halley Watch (IHW). The model solves the Boltzmann equation with a Direct Simulation
Monte Carlo technique [Tenishev et al. (2008, Astrophys. J., 685, 659-677)] by tracking
trajectories of gas molecules and dust grains under the influence of the comet’s weak gravity
field with momentum exchange among particles modeled in a probabilistic manner. The
cometary nucleus is considered to be the source of dust and the parent species (in our model:
H2O, CO, H2CO, CO2, CH3OH, C2H6, C2H4, C2H2, HCN, NH3, and CH4) in the
coma. Subsequently our model also tracks the corresponding dissociation products
(H, H2, O, OH, C, CH, CH2, CH3, N, NH, NH2, C2, C2H, C2H5, CN, and HCO).
This work has been supported by JPL subcontract 1266313 under NASA grant
NMO710889, NASA planetary atmospheres program grant NNX09AB59G, grant
AST-0707283 from the NSF Planetary Astronomy program, and the Swiss National Science
Foundation. |
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