The following document lists the file abstract/JCROVISI_NEWCOMET.abs
from catalogue VI/111.
A plain copy of the file
(without headers/trailers) may be downloaded.
Comets are believed to retain most of the original content of the pristine Solar Nebula. Therefore, their study provides a unique way to understand the history of our Solar System and its relation to the interstellar medium. Only periodic comets with gas production rates of at most a few 10E28 H2O molecules s-1 could be proposed in the Central Program. We may expect the appearance of much brighter "new" comets during ISO life time. We propose to observe these unexpected, bright comets as targets of opportunity. The primary goals are the same: to investigate the dust and gas compositions of these objects, to probe the molecular excitation mechanisms and the coma physical conditions, to monitor the cometary activity and outgassing processes as a function of heliocentric distance, to compare the behaviour of different objects. However, performing this study on much brighter objects than the relatively faint periodic comets of the Central Program will allow us to obtain a higher scientific return. We propose: 1) To observe reference spectra with the LWS and SWS. 2) To map molecular and dust emission with CAM. 3) To secure low resolution spectra with PHT at different heliocentric distances.