2021/05/07 by Smith, Allison J., Roshi, D. Anish, Manoharan, Periasamy +3
#Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) #FOS: Physical sciences
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2105.03510
We report the detection of emission from the OH 18 cm Λ-doublet transitions toward Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE using the Arecibo Telescope. The antenna temperatures are 113±3 mK for the 1667 MHz line and 57±3 mK for the 1665 MHz line. The beam averaged OH column density (centered on the comet nucleus) derived from the 1667 transition is NOH=1.11±0.06×1013 cm-2. We implemented the Haser model to derive an OH production rate. The estimated OH production rate using the 1667 MHz transition is QOH=3.6±0.6×1028 s-1, a factor of 2.4 lower than optically derived values for the same observing day, the difference of which is likely explained by quenching.