IRCS/Subaru observations of water in the inner coma of Comet 73P-B/Schwassmann–Wachmann 3: Spatially resolved rotational temperatures and ortho–para ratios

Abstract

Abstract Comet 73P-B/Schwassmann–Wachmann 3 was observed with IRCS/Subaru at geocentric distance of 0.074 AU on UT 10 May 2006. Multiple H 2 O emission lines were detected in non-resonant fluorescence near 2.9 μm. No significant variation in total H 2 O production rate was found during the (3 h) duration of our observations. H 2 O rotational temperatures and ortho-to-para abundance ratios were measured for several positions in the coma. The temperatures extracted from two different time intervals show very similar spatial distributions. For both, the rotational temperature decreased from ∼110 to ∼90 K as the projected distance from the nucleus increased from ∼5 to ∼30 km. We see no evidence for OPR change in the coma. The H 2 O ortho–para ratio is consistent with the statistical equilibrium value (3.0) for all spatially resolved measurements. This implies a nuclear spin temperature higher than ∼45 K.