IAU Colloquium 168
Cometary Nuclei in Space and Time

Nanjing, China
May 18-22, 1998

Electronically-submitted Abstracts of Participants


From interstellar dust to comets: infrared emission from Comet Hale-Bopp (C/1995 O1)
A. Li(1,2) and J.M. Greenberg(1)
(1) Laboratory Astrophysics, University of Leiden, The Netherlands; (2) Beijing Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. China.

The 3-20 mum IR thermal emission spectrum of Comet Hale-Bopp = (C/1995 O1) at a heliocentric distance of rh=1.15 AU has been calculated using fluffy aggregates of silicate core-organic refractory mantle interstellar dust as the comet dust model. The principal dust properties, similar to those obtained for other comets, provide good fits to the observation. Our results are significantly different from the common thought that Hale-Bopp is rich in submicron grains. The mean grain masses derived here are two to three orders of magnitude higher than those estimated from the empirical superheat method or from the IR emission modeling both of which use compact silicate/carbon particles. It has been shown that the IR emission alone can not give a reliable dust production rate. We have also modeled the crystalline silicate emission spectrum.



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Created 28 Apr 1998. yfp.