Chemical Composition of Outbursting Comet C/2015 ER61 (PanSTARRS)

Abstract Comet C/2015 ER61 (PanSTARRS) is a long-period Oort cloud comet whose favorable approach to the inner parts of the solar system in 2017 April–May enabled us to characterize its primary volatile composition using the iSHELL spectrograph mounted on the 3 m NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Maunakea, Hawaii. We used three iSHELL settings (covering ∼2.8–5.2 μm) to sample fluorescent emissions from H 2 O, OH, CH 3 OH, HCN, C 2 H 2 , NH 3 , CO, CH 4 , C 2 H 6 , H 2 CO, and OCS on multiple dates ranging from UT 2017 April 15 (shortly after its April 4 outburst) to May 13, nearly 30 days before the detection of its double nucleus. Our observations also offered the opportunity to obtain sensitive 3 σ upper limits for cyanoacetylene ( HC 3 N). We report rotational temperatures ( T rot ), production rates (Qs), abundance (mixing) ratios (relative to H 2 O and C 2 H 6 ), and spatial distributions in the coma. ER61 exhibits variability in production rates of many species on short (day-to-day) and long (pre- versus post-perihelion) timescales. The relative abundances of these volatile species remained consistent within uncertainties during our pre-perihelion observations but tended to decrease during our post-perihelion observations (with the exception of CH 3 OH and HCN). The short-timescale variability in the production rates of these volatiles could be due to diurnal effects (over the course of the rotation of the nucleus) and/or the effect of its outburst. The decrease in the production rates and hence the mixing ratios in some volatiles in post-perihelion dates could be due to the presence of seasonal effects in ER61.