Near-Infrared Imaging Spectrophotometry Of Comet C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) Near Perihelion

We present 1- to 5-μm broadband and CVF images of comet Hale-Bopp taken 1997 February 10.5 UT, 50 days before perihelion. All the images exhibit a nonspherical coma with a bright “ridge” in the direction of the dust tail approximately 10″ from the coma. Synthetic aperture spectrophotometry implies that the optically important grains are of a radius ≤0.4 μm; smallest radius for any comet seen to date. The variation of the integrated surface brightness with radial distance from the coma (ρ) in all the images closely follows the “steady state” ρ⁻¹ model for comet dust ablation (Gehrz and Ney, 1992). The near-infrared colors taken along the dust tail are not constant implying the dust grain properties vary with coma distance. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Testing the circumstellar disc hypothesis: a search for H2 outflow signatures from massive young stellar objects with linearly distributed methanol masers

The results of a survey searching for outflows using near-infrared imaging are presented. Targets were chosen from a compiled list of massive young stellar objects associated with methanol masers in linear distributions. Presently, it is a widely held belief that these methanol masers are found in (and delineate) circumstellar accretion discs around massive stars. If this scenario is correct, one way to test the disc hypothesis is to search for outflows perpendicular to the methanol maser distributions. The main objective of the survey was to obtain wide-field near-infrared images of the sites of linearly distributed methanol masers using a narrow-band 2.12-μm filter. This filter is centred on the  H₂ v = 1–0 S(1)  line; a shock diagnostic that has been shown to successfully trace CO outflows from young stellar objects. 28 sources in total were imaged of which 18 sources display H₂ emission. Of these, only two sources showed emission found to be dominantly perpendicular to the methanol maser distribution. Surprisingly, the H₂ emission in these fields is not distributed randomly, but instead the majority of sources are found to have H₂ emission dominantly parallel to their distribution of methanol masers. These results seriously question the hypothesis that methanol masers exist in circumstellar discs. The possibility that linearly distributed methanol masers are instead directly associated with outflows is discussed.     

Hydrated sulphuric acid in dense molecular clouds

We consider sulphur depletion in dense molecular clouds, and suggest hydrated sulphuric acid, H₂SO₄ ·  n H₂O, as a component of interstellar dust in icy mantles. We discuss the formation of hydrated sulphuric acid in collapsing clouds and its instability in heated regions in terms of the existing hot core models and observations. We also show that some features of the infrared spectrum of hydrated sulphuric acid have correspondence in the observed spectra of young stellar objects.