| Name: | Goldy Ahuja |
| Affiliation: | Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad |
| Conference ID : | ASI2024_808 |
| Title : | Optical Spectroscopy of a long-period comet C/2020 V2 (ZTF) |
| Authors : | Goldy Ahuja1,2, K Aravind1, Mathieu Vander Donckt3, Said Hmiddouch3, Shashikiran Ganesh1, Emmanuel Jehin3, Devendra Sahu4, T. Sivarani4 |
| Authors Affiliation: | 1 Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad – 380009, India
2 Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar – 382355, India
3 STAR Institute, Univ. of Liège, Allée du 6 Août 19c, 4000 Liège, Belgium
4 IIA, Koramangala, Bengaluru, Karnataka – 560034, India
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| Mode of Presentation: | Oral |
| Abstract Category : | Sun, Solar System, Exoplanets, and Astrobiology |
| Abstract : | Comets are made up of volatile ice and dust, and they are primarily found in reservoirs far from the Sun. Since they spend most of their lifetime far from the influence of the Sun, they are not expected to have changed much since the time of formation of the solar system. Thus, the cometary composition is an indicator of the composition at the time of formation. When a comet approaches the Sun, solid ice starts sublimating, and we observe a cloud of gas and dust, known as a coma. Chiefly, cometary spectra exhibit emission bands in the optical domain from molecules such as CN, C3, and C2. These emissions are the daughter/granddaughter molecules that formed during the sublimation of the icy material in the comet. A study of the fluxes and flux ratios of these molecules as a function of distance from the Sun allows us to place constraints on the place of the initial formation of the comet in the proto-solar nebula.
Comet C/2020 V2 (ZTF) is a long-period comet that was observed from the Mount Abu Observatory using the LISA instrument on PRL 1.2m telescope and the Himalayan Chandran Telescope (HCT) to monitor its activity during pre- and post-perihelion stages. The perihelion of the comet was on 8 May 2023, with a perihelion distance of 2.23 AU. We have also used the narrow-band photometric data observed from TRAPPIST telescopes to complement the spectroscopic data. |
