Abstract
AN important discovery made by the 1986 spacecraft encounters with comet Halley was that of 'CHON particles', dust that is predominantly composed of the light elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen1–3. Using three sets of particle mass spectra that were critically selected for high dynamic range and a minimum of defects, we investigate here the relationship between CHON and silicate materials. We find that there are essentially no pure CHON particles in the 0.1–1 µm size range sampled; instead, essentially all Halley particles sampled by the mass spectrometers are a mixture of both CHON and silicate components. The earlier evidence for pure CHON particles1,4,5 came from mass spectra with low dynamic range, in which only the highest major-element peaks could be detected. Our data show that the CHON and silicate components are interdispersed at submicrometre scales, and there is evidence that sublimation of volatile organic material occurs, bringing many particles to a common proportion of CHON and silicate material.
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Lawler, M., Brownlee, D. CHON as a component of dust from comet Halley. Nature 359, 810–812 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1038/359810a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/359810a0
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