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Volatile Composition and Outgassing in C/2018 Y1 (Iwamoto): Extending Limits for High-resolution Infrared Cometary Spectroscopy between 2.8 and 5.0 µm

Vervack, Ronald J., Jr.; Kawakita, Hideyo; DiSanti, Michael A. +7 more

We used the powerful high spectral resolution cross-dispersed facility spectrograph, iSHELL, at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) to observe C/2018 Y1 (Iwamoto), a long-period comet from the Oort cloud. We report production rates for water and eight other parent molecules (native ices), C₂H₆, CO, CH₄, H

Variable X-Ray Emission of Comet 46P/Wirtanen

Bodewits, Dennis; Christian, Damian J.; Koutroumpa, Dimitra +3 more

In this paper, we present an analysis of X-ray and optical/ultraviolet (UV) data from the favorable (Δ ~ 0.077 au) 2018 apparition of comet 46P/Wirtanen. The comet was observed during three different epochs (before, during, and after perihelion) over a 1.5 month period using the X-Ray Telescope (XRT) and Ultraviolet and Optical Telescope (UVOT) in…