Observations of comet Kohoutek (1973f) with a ground-based Fabry-Perot spectrometer

Observations of Hα, H2O+, and O i emission lines from comet Kohoutek were made during a 2-month period around perihelion. Analyses of Hα line profiles and line intensities indicate that the mean outflow velocity of the hydrogen atoms was 7.8plus-or-minus0.2 km s-1 and that the hydrogen atom production rate typically varied from about 0.4times1029 s-1 to about 1.4times1029 s-1 for comet-Sun distances between 1 AU and 0.4 AU, respectively. The identification of an H2O+ emission feature in certain Hα scans indicates that the H2O+ ions were moving in a tailward direction with a velocity of 20 to 40 km s-1 with respect to the comet nucleus. An upper limit of 1 part in 100 was found for the D/H ratio in the cometary atomic hydrogen cloud