Investigating the Temperature Distribution of Diatomic Carbon in Comets Using the Swan Bands
Abstract
We present high spectral resolution observations of comets 122P/de Vico and 153P/Ikeya-Zhang obtained with the Tull Coudé spectrograph on the 2.7 m Harlan J. Smith telescope of McDonald Observatory. We used these data to study the distribution of the lines of the {{{d}}}3{{{\Pi }}}g{--}{{{a}}}3{{{\Pi }}}u C2 (Swan) bands. We show that the data are best represented with two rotational temperatures, with the lowest energy lines being at a relatively cool temperature and the higher energy lines being at a higher temperature. We discuss the implications of this two-temperature distribution and suggest future work.
- Publication:
-
The Astronomical Journal
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- DOI:
- 10.3847/1538-3881/ab4c93
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1910.03688
- Bibcode:
- 2019AJ....158..221N
- Keywords:
-
- Molecular spectroscopy;
- High resolution spectroscopy;
- Comets;
- Comas;
- 2095;
- 2096;
- 280;
- 271;
- Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 15 pages, 8 figures