Molecular oxygen in oort cloud comet 1P/Halley

Rubin, Martin; Altwegg, Kathrin; Dishoeck, E. F. van; Schwehm, G. (2015). Molecular oxygen in oort cloud comet 1P/Halley. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 815(1), L11. Institute of Physics Publishing IOP 10.1088/2041-8205/815/1/L11

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Recently, the ROSINA mass spectrometer suite on board the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft discovered an abundant amount of molecular oxygen, O2, in the coma of Jupiter family comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko of O2/H2O = 3.80 ± 0.85%. It could be shown that O2 is indeed a parent species and that the derived abundances point to a primordial origin. Crucial questions are whether the O2 abundance is peculiar to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko or Jupiter family comets in general, and also whether Oort cloud comets such as comet 1P/Halley contain similar amounts of molecular oxygen. We investigated mass spectra obtained by the Neutral Mass Spectrometer instrument during the flyby by the European Space Agency's Giotto probe of comet 1P/Halley. Our investigation indicates that a production rate of O2 of 3.7 ± 1.7% with respect to water is indeed compatible with the obtained Halley data and therefore that O2 might be a rather common and abundant parent species.

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