Simultaneous Swift X-ray and UV views of comet C/2007 N3 (Lulin)

TL;DR

This study presents simultaneous X-ray and UV observations of comet C/2007 N3 (Lulin), revealing the comet's interaction with solar wind and water production rates through detailed spectral and morphological analysis.

Contribution

It provides the first combined X-ray and UV analysis of this comet, demonstrating the spatial offset of X-ray emission and linking it to solar wind interactions and water dissociation processes.

Findings

X-ray flux measured at 4.3±1.3 x 10^-13 erg/cm^2/s

X-ray emission offset sunward by ~35,000 km from UV peak

Comet's water production rate estimated at 6-8 x 10^28 mol/s

Abstract

We present an analysis of simultaneous X-Ray and UV observations ofcomet C/2007 N3 (Lulin) taken on three days between January 2009 and March 2009 using the Swift observatory. For our X-ray observations, we used basic transforms to account for the movement of the comet to allow the combination of all available data to produce an exposure-corrected image. We fit a simple model to the extracted spectrum and measured an X-ray flux of 4.3+/-1.3 * 10^-13 ergs cm-2 s-1 in the 0.3 to 1.0 keV band. In the UV, we acquired large-aperture photometry and used a coma model to derive water production rates given assumptions regarding the distribution of water and its dissociation into OH molecules about the comet's nucleus. We compare and discuss the X-ray and UV morphology of the comet. We show that the peak of the cometary X-ray emission is offset sunward of the UV peak emission, assumed to be the nucleus, by approximately 35,000 km. The offset observed, the shape of X-ray emission and the decrease of the X-ray emission comet-side of the peak, suggested that the comet was indeed collisionally thick to charge exchange, as expected from our measurements of the comet's water production rate (6--8 10^28 mol. s-1). The X-ray spectrum is consistent with solar wind charge exchange emission, and the comet most likely interacted with a solar wind depleted of very highly ionised oxygen. We show that the measured X-ray lightcurve can be very well explained by variations in the comet's gas production rates, the observing geometry and variations in the solar wind flux.