Cometary Charge Exchange Diagnostics in UV and X-ray

TL;DR

This paper reviews how charge exchange emissions in UV and X-ray from comets serve as diagnostic tools for understanding solar wind interactions, highlighting observational capabilities and limitations.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of cometary charge exchange diagnostics in UV and X-ray, emphasizing observational insights and their limitations.

Findings

Charge exchange emissions reveal solar wind properties.

Spatial, temporal, and spectral features provide diagnostic information.

Observational limitations affect diagnostic accuracy.

Abstract

Since the initial discovery of cometary charge exchange emission, more than 20 comets have been observed with a variety of X-ray and UV observatories. This observational sample offers a broad variety of comets, solar wind environments and observational conditions. It clearly demonstrates that solar wind charge exchange emission provides a wealth of diagnostics, which are visible as spatial, temporal, and spectral emission features. We review the possibilities and limitations of each of those in this contribution.