Observations of water in comets with Odin

Abstract

The Odin satellite, which can observe the l10-l01 rotational line at 557 GHz of ortho water with a high spectral resolution (80 m s-1) and a spatial resolution of 2.1′, is well suited for cometary studies. The intensity of this line provides an estimate of the water production rate. The line width gives a direct measure of the coma expansion velocity. The line centre position and shape are affected by the anisotropy of the outgassing and by optical depth effects. Comets observed with Odin up to now are C/2001 A2 (LINEAR) during the commissioning phase of the satellite, 19P/Borrelly at the time of the Deep Space 1 flyby, C/2000 WM1 (LINEAR), and 153P/2002 C1 (Ikeya-Zhang). For this last comet, thorough observations were made at the moment of its closest approach to Earth at the end of April 2002. A deep integration resulted in the detection of the l10-l01 line of H2 18O at 548 GHz. No 16O/18O isotopic anomaly is found.