Letter to the Editor

CO₂ as the main parent source of atomic oxygen in comet C/2017 K2 (Pan-STARRS)

¹ INAF Astronomical observatory of Padova, Vicolo dell’Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padova, Italy
e-mail: pamela.cambianica@inaf.it
² INAF Astronomical Observatory of Arcetri, Largo Enrico Fermi 5, 40125 Firenze, Italy
³ Fundación Galileo Galilei-INAF, Rambla José Ana Fernandez Pérez 7, 38712 Breña Baja, TF, Spain
⁴ Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, C/Via Lactea s/n, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
⁵ Departamento de Astrofisica, Univ. de La Laguna, Av. del Astrofisico Francisco Sánchez s/n, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain

Received: 25 November 2022
Accepted: 23 May 2023

Abstract

C/2017 K2 (Pan-STARRS) is an Oort cloud comet discovered in May 2017. Ground observations have revealed that this long-period comet was active at heliocentric distance of 35 au. At such a distance, activity cannot be driven by the sublimation or the exothermic crystallization of water ice. We assume that the activity of comet C/2017 K2 may be driven by the sublimation of super-volatile ices such as CO and CO₂. The nature of parent molecules driving the unprecedented activity of comet C/2017 K2 can be investigated by analyzing its spectrum. In particular, the analysis of atomic oxygen emission lines and the calculation of the green (5577.339 Å) to red (6300.304 and 6363.776 Å) line intensity ratio (hereafter G/R) can reveal the nature of molecules driving cometary activity. We report on the detection of atomic oxygen lines in the spectra of comet C/2017 K2 (Pan-STARRS) from high-resolution spectra obtained at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) on 24 June and 2 July 2022 using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher North (HARPS-N) echelle spectrograph. We found G/R ratios equal to 0.29±0.02 (24 July 2022) and 0.27±0.01 (2 July 2022), which are consistent with a cometary activity driven by CO₂, even if located at 2.8 au from the Sun. To better define the nature of the driving molecule, we measured the width of the three oxygen lines and found that the green line in the spectrum of 24 July 2022 is wider than either of the two red lines. This allows us to argue that CO₂ is dissociated by highly energetic solar photons that produce O(¹S) with a large excess velocity.