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| Titel |
Detection of ethylene produced by the July 2009 impact with Jupiter |
| VerfasserIn |
Bruno Bézard, Raphaël Moreno, Cedric Leyrat, Glenn Orton, Emmanuel Lellouch, Pierre Drossart, André Marten, Caitlin Griffith |
| 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 |
250041058
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| Zusammenfassung |
| We report the detection of ethylene (C2H4) on the site of the 19 July 2009 impact on
Jupiter, about two months after the collision. Observations were made on 18 and 30
September 2009 at the Very Large Telescope using the VISIR spectrometer at high
spectral resolution around 10.54 μm. Emission from several C2H4 lines was clearly
detected along the whole instrument slit, covering about 3Ë in latitude and 18Ë in
longitude. This is the first observation of a compound produced by shock chemistry
on this recent impact site. The derived C2H4 column density is larger than that
observed in July 1994 on the site of a large impact (K) from Comet Shoemaker Levy 9
(SL9). The total mass integrated over the estimated area of the 2009 debris field is
only slightly smaller than that over the SL9 K site. As observations of the impact
debris tend to indicate that the mass of the 2009 impactor was significantly smaller
than a large SL9 fragment, the relatively large mass of ethylene produced may
indicate a different, more reducing, chemistry in the shocked Jovian air compared with
SL9. This might point to an asteroidal origin of the 2009 impactor. We did not
detect stratospheric ammonia at the impact site, two months after the collision, in
contrast to its detection at the Gemini telescope on July 24. This indicates rapid
removal of ammonia by photolysis, as expected from photochemical considerations. |
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