Table 2: Comparative abundances of "CHO'' molecules in comet Hale-Bopp and in the Galactic Centre Sgr B2(N).
Molecule Relative abundance
  C/1995 O1a Sgr B2(N)b
  $\times 100$ $\times 10^7$
H2CO ${\approx} 1^{c}$ >0.005
CH3OH 2.4 2.
CH3CHO 0.025 0.002
c-C2H4O <0.2 0.001
C2H5OH <0.1 0.01
HCOOH 0.09 0.001
CH3COOH <0.06 $\approx $0.01
HCOOCH3 0.08 0.01
CH2OHCHO <0.04 0.0007-0.0011
HOCH2CH2OH 0.25 0.0008-0.0015
a Cometary abundances are given relative to H2O. They are taken from Bockelée-Morvan et al. (2000), Crovisier et al. (2004) and from the present work.
b Abundances are given relative to H2assuming N[H2] = $2.8 \times 10^{24}$ cm-2. They are taken from Nummelin et al. (2000), from Mehringer et al. (1997) for CH3COOH, from Hollis et al. (2000, 2001, 2002) for glycolaldehyde and ethylene glycol. Since the spatial distributions of the molecules differ, these relative abundances must be considered with some caution.
c Cometary formaldehyde is mainly coming from an extended source. Less than 0.07% relative to water is coming directly from the nucleus according to Wink et al. (1999).

Source LaTeX | All tables | In the text