Upper Limits of SO AND SO2 in Comets

Abstract

We have calculated synthetic spectra of SO and compared them with spectra of Comets I-A-A and P/Halley, in which Wallis and Krishna-Swamy claimed a tentative identification of SO. We found no evidence for the presence of So in these spectra. The derived upper limits on the production rates of SO and S02 in Comet I-A-A were found to be at least 50 times less than the S2 production rate. We also found that the SO and S02 upper limits in Comets P/Halley, P/Encke, and Bradfield (1979X) were less than the S2 abundance, reported in Comet IRAS-Araki-Alcock. Our result, contradict recent irradiation experiments, which produced abundant SO compared with S2 under most circumstances. This may suggest totally different models of the S2 producing mechanism in comets.