HR: 1330h
AN: A12A-0069    [PDF]
TI: Photochemistry of Cometary Comae
AU: * Boice, D C
EM: dboice@swri.edu
AF: Southwest Research Institute, Space Science & Engineering Div. 6220 Culebra Road P.O. Drawer 28510, San Antonio, TX 78228-0510 United States
AU: Lu, Y
EM: ylu@cs.utsa.edu
AF: Univ. of Texas at San Antonio, Dept. of Computer Science 6900 N. Loop 1604 W., San Antonio, TX 78249-0667 United States
AB: Relevant physico-chemical processes must be identified and understood to provide the framework within which observations of comets can be understood and inferences about their composition can be made. Analyses of observations of comets (e.g., Halley, Borrelly, LINEAR WM1, Hale-Bopp, Hyakutake) have provided valuable insights into the intrinsic properties of their nuclei (e.g., composition, active surface fraction, surface properties, temperature) and the important physical and chemical processes that occur in their comae. The latest results detailing these processes will be discussed, including the thermodynamics (e.g., temperature and velocity structure), photo- and gas-phase chemistry (e.g., composition, gas and electron energetics), and interactions between gaseous species and dust (composition in distributed sources, gas-grain reactions, mass-loading and energy balance of both gas phase and dust particles), concentrating on the collision-dominated inner coma. Special consideration is given to the determination of parent species from the plethora of molecules and atoms seen in cometary comae, concentrating on observations of $S_2, Na, CS, C_2, C_3, NS$, and $HCN/HNC$ in recent comets.
DE: 0317 Chemical kinetic and photochemical properties
DE: 0343 Planetary atmospheres (5405, 5407, 5409, 5704, 5705, 5707)
DE: 6005 Atmospheres--composition and chemistry
DE: 6008 Composition
DE: 6210 Comets
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting