Name : Kumar Venkataramani,
Affiliation : Post-Doctoral Fellow, Physical Research Laboratory,
Ahmedabad, India

Title : Ground Based Observations of Comets and Asteroids from Mount Abu
Infra-Red Observatory, India

Abstract

Comets contain icy volatiles, which formed beyond the water snow line in
the proto-planetary disk, whereas the asteroids are rocky bodies which
formed in the inner high temperature region of the disk. The volatile
material in comets make them extremely active as they travel in their orbit
towards the Sun. The cometary ices start sublimating giving rise to a
mixture of gas and dust which form the coma. This mixture of gas and dust
arise from the icy volatile material which was trapped in the system ever
since its formation in the proto-planetary disk. This makes them the
signature bodies to understand the formation of the solar system.
A plethora of emission lines are seen in the optical spectrum of a comet.
With an aim of studying these emissions from various molecules in comets,
optical spectra of various comets and a few a near-Earth asteroids have
been obtained with a low resolution spectrograph using the telescopes at
the Mount Abu Infra-red observatory, India.
The Mount Abu Infra-red Observatory is located at the highest peak of
Aravali mountain ranges at Mount Abu in the state of Rajasthan, India. The
observatory is operated by Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad,
India (Dept of Space, Govt of India). It is located at a latitude of 24 deg
North and at a longitude of 72 deg East and at an altitude of 1680m above
the mean sea level. The observatory houses two active telescopes : The 1.2m
and the 0.5m telescope. With the generally low humidity levels, the
observatory sees more than 220 clear nights with relatively good seeing.
A brief summary of the facilities at the observatory and few of the results
obtained from the comet and asteroid observations at Mount Abu will be
discussed in the talk.