Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

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American Astronomical Society, Astronomical Journal, 1(141), p. 12, 2010

DOI: 10.1088/0004-6256/141/1/12

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Swift-Uvot Grism Spectroscopy of Comets: A First Application to C/2007 N3 (Lulin)

This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Preprint: archiving forbidden
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Postprint: archiving forbidden
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Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

We observed comet C/2007 N3 (Lulin) twice on UT 28 January 2009, using the UV grism of the Ultraviolet and Optical Telescope (UVOT) on board the Swift Gamma Ray Burst space observatory. Grism spectroscopy provides spatially resolved spectroscopy over large apertures for faint objects. We developed a novel methodology to analyze grism observations of comets, and applied a Haser comet model to extract production rates of OH, CS, NH, CN, C3, C2, and dust. The water production rates retrieved from two visits on this date were $6.7 ± 0.7$ and 7.9 $±$ 0.7 x 1E28 molecules s-1, respectively. Jets were sought (but not found) in the white-light and ‘OH’ images reported here, suggesting that the jets reported by Knight and Schleicher (2009) are unique to CN. Based on the abundances of its carbon-bearing species, comet Lulin is ‘typical’ (i.e., not ‘depleted’) in its composition.