Parent Volatiles in Comet 9P/Tempel 1: Before and After Impact

Creators: Mumma, Michael J.; DiSanti, Michael A.; Magee-Sauer, Karen; Bonev, Boncho P.; Villanueva, Geronimo L.; Kawakita, Hideyo; Russo, Neil Dello; Gibb, Erika L.; Blake, Geoffrey A.; Lyke, James E.; Campbell, Randall D.; Aycock, Joel; Conrad, Al; Hill, Grant M.

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Abstract

We quantified eight parent volatiles (H_2O, C_2H_6, HCN, CO, CH_3OH, H_2CO, C_2H_2, and CH_4) in the Jupiter-family comet Tempel 1 using high-dispersion infrared spectroscopy in the wavelength range 2.8 to 5.0 micrometers. The abundance ratio for ethane was significantly higher after impact, whereas those for methanol and hydrogen cyanide were unchanged. The abundance ratios in the ejecta are similar to those for most Oort cloud comets, but methanol and acetylene are lower in Tempel 1 by a factor of about 2. These results suggest that the volatile ices in Tempel 1 and in most Oort cloud comets originated in a common region of the protoplanetary disk.

Additional Information

© 2005 American Association for the Advancement of Science. 18 August 2005; Accepted 9 September 2005; Published online 15 September 2005. We thank J. W. Feuss and C. Makrides for assistance. This work was supported by NASA's Planetary Astronomy Program under RTOP 344-32-30-07 (M.J.M.) and RTOP 344-32-98 (M.A.D.); the NSF Research at Undergraduate Institutions program no. 0407052 (K.M.S.), the National Research Council (G.L.V., a resident research associate), and the NASA Origins of Solar Systems program (G.A.B.). Our data were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. 9P/ Tempel 1 data obtained on 4 July are available via the Keck Observatory Archive (http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/science/deepimpact/KeckDeepImpact.html).

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