The outgassing and composition of Comet 19P/Borrelly from radio observations

Radio spectroscopic observations of Comet 19P/Borrelly were performed during the 1994 apparition and at, and near, the time of the Deep Space 1 flyby in 2001. HCN, CS, CH3OH, and H2CO were detected using the 30-m telescope of the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, and their production rates relative to water are estimated to be 0.06–0.11, 0.07, 1.7, and 0.4%, respectively. Only upper limits are derived for H2S and CO. The upper limit for CO/H2O (<15%) is not very constraining, while the upper limit for the H2S/H2O ratio of 0.45% is near the bottom of the range of values measured for other comets. Observations of the OH radical at the Nançay radio telescope provide water production rates a few weeks before the 1994 and 2001 perihelia. Observations of the 110–101 water line at 557 GHz with the Odin satellite yield a water production rate of (2.5±0.5)×1028 s−1 on September 22, 2001, at the time of the Deep Space 1 encounter, and (3.3±0.6)×1028 s−1 averaged over the September 22–24, 2001 period. The line shapes are asymmetric and blueshifted by V0∼−0.18 km s−1 for the best observed HCN lines recorded one week after perihelion. The HCN line shapes, and the similar OH and HCN velocity shifts over the September–November 1994 and August–September 2001 periods, favor anisotropic outgassing towards the Sun. Strong outgassing directed along the primary dust jet seen on visible images is not excluded by the HCN line shapes, but unrealistically high gas expansion velocities are required to explain the line shapes in that case.