FAR-ULTRAVIOLET SPECTRAL IMAGES OF COMET HALLEY FROM SOUNDING ROCKETS

The authors present far-ultraviolet images of comet Halley obtained from sounding rockets launched from White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, on 24 February and 13 March 1986. They obtained direct electrographic images of the hydrogen coma of the comet at the Lyman- alpha wavelength (1,216 A), and objective spectra containing images of the coma at the oxygen (1,304 A), carbon (1,561 and 1,657 A) and sulfur (1,814 A) resonance multiplets. Analysis of the Lyman- alpha images yields hydrogen atom production rates of 1. 9 multiplied by 10**3**0 s** minus **1 and 1. 4 multiplied by 10**3**0 s** minus **1 for the two observations. Images of oxygen, carbon and sulfur emissions obtained with the objective grating spectrograph are presented for the first set of observations and preliminary production rates are derived for these elements.