Abstract
Recent advances in infrared and radio astronomy have made possible very high resolution spectroscopic observations of comentary comae, thus allowing development of a relatively new field of cometary science: retrieval of kinematic properties of the coma from velocity-resolved spectral line profiles. In this paper we review the formation of cometary spectral line profiles and we incorporate the most important gas dynamic processes into an outflow model oriented to the interpretation of spectroscopic observations of parent molecules. After discussing the simplifications and the Monte Carlo computational procedures that are required to make practical use of the model, we use it to study the influence of field-of-view expansion velocity, kinetic temperature, and anisotropic outflow distributions on the formation of spectral line profiles of parent molecules. This kinematic model is applied to airborne infrared observations of H 2O in Comets P/Halley and Wilson (1987 VII) in a companion paper.
Published Version
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