Water group ion distributions in the midcometosheath of comet Halley

In the midcometosheath of comet Halley (1 x 10(exp 5) to 2 x 10(exp 5) km from the nucleus) the center-of-mass plasma frame is approximately the bulk flow velocity of the cometary ions, and the Alfven wave speed is an appreciable fraction of the flow speed. Here, the peaks of the water group ion distributions observed by the Giotto ion mass spectrometer are at velocities consistently below the expected pickup speed. It is shown that this effect is consistent with the scattering of the new pickup ions onto a bispherical shell distribution. The model does not fit the data inside approximately 1.2 x 10(exp 5) km, however, possibly as a result of the growing importance of collisions or the presence of other processes such as scattering on obliquely propagating magnetosonic waves.