EVIDENCE FOR DUST-RELATED X-RAY-EMISSION FROM COMET C 1995 O1 (HALE-BOPP)/

We report the discovery of X-ray emission from comet C/1995 O1 (Hale-B opp) by the LECS instrument on board BeppoSAX on 1996 September 10-11. The 0.1-2.0 keV luminosity decayed by a factor of 2 on a timescale of similar to 10 hr with a mean value of 5 x 10(16) ergs s(-1). The spec trum is well fitted by a thermal bremsstrahlung model with a temperatu re of 0.29 +/- 0.06 keV or a power law with a photon index of 3.1(-0.2 )(+0.6). The lack of detected C and O line emission places severe cons traints on many models for cometary X-ray emission, especially those t hat involve X-ray production in cometary gas. The luminosity is a fact or of at least 3.4 greater than measured by the Extreme Ultraviolet Ex plorer (EUVE) 4 days later. This difference may be related to the emer gence from the nucleus on 1996 September 9 of a dust-rich cloud. Over the next few days, the cloud continued to expand, becoming increasingl y tenuous until it had reached an extent of similar to 3 x 10(5) km (o r similar to 2') by the start of the EWE observation. We speculate tha t the observed reduction in X-ray intensity is evidence for dust fragm entation. These results support the view that cometary X-ray emission arises from the interaction between solar X-rays and cometary dust.