On the temperature and gas composition in the region of comet formation

Abstract

The findings of the Giotto and Vega spacecrafts on the gas composition of comet Halley, together with an experimental study on the trapping of gas mixtures in amorphous water ice, enable estimation of the gas composition and temperature in the region of comet Halley's formation: If Halley was formed in the solar nebula by condensation of water vapor in the presence of gas, in the region of its formation the CO/CH 4 ratio had to be at least 100 and the temperature about 48 K. The ice particles that formed the comet could not have condensed at a higher temperature and subsequently cool down because then the 7% CO found as a parent molecule could not have been trapped in the ice. A ∼48 K formation temperature implies that the ice was in amorphous form. This temperature is surprisingly close to the temperatures observed by IRAS for the circumstellar dust shells around α PsA (55 K) and ε Eri (45 K) and supports the suggestion that short-period comets were formed outside the region of planet formation. The CO content of comet Halley and the high sensitivity to explosion of irradiated, ice-coated, interstellar grains seem to exclude the possibility of their direct incorporation into comets. Yet, they might have provided the condensed organics—the “CHON” materials.