Cometary science with CUBES
arXiv:2203.15579 · doi:10.1007/s10686-022-09853-w
Abstract
The proposed CUBES spectrograph for ESO's Very Large Telescope will be an exceptionally powerful instrument for the study of comets. The gas coma of a comet contains a large number of emission features in the near-UV range covered by CUBES (305-400 nm), which are diagnostic of the composition of the ices in its nucleus and the chemistry in the coma. Production rates and relative ratios between different species reveal how much ice is present and inform models of the conditions in the early solar system. In particular, CUBES will lead to advances in detection of water from very faint comets, revealing how much ice may be hidden in the main asteroid belt, and in measuring isotopic and molecular composition ratios in a much wider range of comets than currently possible, provide constraints on their formation temperatures. CUBES will also be sensitive to emissions from gaseous metals (e.g., FeI and NiI), which have recently been identified in comets and offer an entirely new area of investigation to understand these enigmatic objects.
Accepted for publication in Experimental Astronomy
References in corpus (24)
- Planetary Spectrum Generator: an accurate online radiative transfer suite for atmospheres, comets, small bodies and exoplanets
- Elemental and molecular abundances in comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
- The Delivery of Water During Terrestrial Planet Formation
- Isotopic ratios of H, C, N, O, and S in comets C/2012 F6 (Lemmon) and C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy)
- Terrestrial deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio in water in hyperactive comets
- A Herschel Study of D/H in Water in the Jupiter-Family Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova and Prospects for D/H Measurements with CCAT
- The Main Belt Comets and Ice in the Solar System
- The 16OH/18OH and OD/OH isotope ratios in comet C/2002 T7 (LINEAR)
- Detection of a Water Tracer in Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov
- CO-Driven Activity in Comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS)
- Water production rates and activity of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov
- High resolution optical spectroscopy of the -rich comet C/2016 R2 (PanSTARRS)
- Strong CO and N Emission in Comet C/2016 R2 (Pan-STARRS)
- Photometric and spectroscopic analysis of Comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 activity
- Distant activity of comet C/2002 VQ94 (LINEAR): optical spectrophotometric monitoring between 8.4 and 16.8 au from the Sun
- Seasonal changes of the volatile density in the coma and on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
- C/2010 U3 (Boattini): A Bizarre Comet Active at Record Heliocentric Distance
- Gaseous atomic nickel in the coma of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov
- The similarity of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov to solar system comets from high resolution optical spectroscopy
- X-shooter search for outgassing from Main Belt Comet P/2012 T1 (Pan-STARRS)
- FeI and NiI in cometary atmospheres. Connections between the NiI/FeI abundance ratio and chemical characteristics of Jupiter-family and Oort-cloud comets
- An S2 Fluorescence Model for Interpreting High-Resolution Cometary Spectra. I. Model Description and Initial Results
- A physico-chemical model to study the ion densitydistribution in the inner coma of comet C/2016 R2(Pan-STARRS)
- Main-belt comets as tracers of ice in the inner Solar system