#
# Program information file
#
PROGRAM_ID 2023B077
PROGRAM_TITLE Temporal variability of the physical properties of water-ice grains in cometary comae.
PROGRAM_INV1 Silvia Protopapa
PROGRAM_INV2 Michael S.P. Kelley
PROGRAM_INV3 Bin Yang
PROGRAM_INV4
PROGRAM_INV5
PROGRAM_SCICAT comets
PROGRAM_ABSTRACT_BEG
Cometary comae are the only means to remotely investigate the primitive interior of a large sample of cometary nuclei. The compositional taxonomy of comets has been based primarily on coma abundances of gas species as well as chemical and physical properties of dust in the coma. These observations have been critical to constrain formation and evolution models of comets. However, there is still a missing piece of the puzzle, which is water ice, a major constituent of comets. While water-ice grains have been detected in cometary comae, it is unclear whether their characteristics mirror the comet nucleus interior or are the results of sublimation processes in the coma. We propose to monitor the properties of the icy grains as insolation varies with heliocentric distance on the nuclei of nine comets. This is a long term monitoring. The objective of this proposal is to study the long-term behavior, rather than snapshots, of individual comets and to ascertain which comets have detectable water-ice grains and how the properties of the ice [abundance, purity, size, phase] change over a long period of time. The proposed set of measurements will be unique and will be used to infer, in a systematic way, the physical evolution of the ice and, potentially, the nucleus composition. Our comet sample has been chosen such that we can examine the development of water ice throughout a very long orbital arc. Using the NASA/IRTF we intend to acquire, in the next two years and half, near-IR spectroscopic observations of each of the proposed targets using the prism mode.
These data will be analyzed by means of spectroscopic and sublimation lifetime models. In 2023B only two of our
nine targets are well positioned in the sky for observations.
PROGRAM_ABSTRACT_END