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Deep Impact at ESO Telescopes

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Deep Impact at ESO Telescopes Reports from Observers Deep Impact at ESO Telescopes Hans-Ullrich Käufl1 This article is a first summary of the ob- of the short-period comets, while the Nancy Ageorges1 servations done with ESO telescopes Oort Cloud contains comets originating Stefano Bagnulo1 and instrumentation in the context of in general from the region of birth of the Luis Barrera 2 NASA’s Deep Impact (DI) space mission. major planets in the Solar System. Hermann Böhnhardt 3 The ESO observers* were part of an Tanyu Bonev 4 extremely active, communicative and Gravitational interaction with the outer Olivier Hainaut1 thus successful worldwide network of planets and the immediate and even more Emmanuel Jehin1 observers. Through this network all distant neighbourhood of the Sun in Florian Kerber1 information was freely exchanged and the Milky Way (passing stars, molecular Gaspare LoCurto1 highlights are reported here as well. clouds, galactic centre) has moved and Jean Manfroid 5 stored these cometary nuclei into the Oort Olivier Marco1 Cloud, now the repository of non-periodic Eric Pantin6 Comets and the formation of the comets. It is the same process, gravita- Emanuela Pompei1 Planetary System tional interaction with stars and molecular Ivo Saviane1 clouds passing our Solar System, which Fernando Selman1 The most important scientific rationale for is responsible for injecting comet nuclei Chris Sterken7 studying comets is to obtain informa- from their storage place back into the in- Heike Rauer 8 tion on their origin, on their relationship ner Solar System where they can be ob- Gian Paolo Tozzi 9 with interstellar and interplanetary materi- served from Earth. Comets then become Michael Weiler 8 al, and on implications for the formation sometimes spectacular objects, since of the Solar System. The knowledge close to the Sun, the frozen volatiles subli- about comets had been synthesized in mate, which creates the dust and gas 1 ESO the 1950s by Fred Whipple into the comae. Coma is the Latin word for “hair” 2 Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias “Dirty Snowball” model for cometary and thus, comets have been referred to de la Educacíon, Santiago de Chile, nuclei. Today comets are referred to as as “hairy stars” by our ancestors. Chile “icy dirt balls” of the solar system be- 3 Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnen- cause this is a better reflection of their Since comets stayed inactive most of systemforschung, Katlenburg-Lindau, constitution of frozen volatiles and dust. their lifetime in the cold environment of Germany Comets are known to arrive in the inner the outer Solar System, they are believed 4 Institute of Astronomy, Sofia, Bulgaria planetary system coming from two main to be primordial, i.e. representing in a 5 Université de Liège, Belgium reservoirs: the Oort Cloud at several close to original form an important popu- 6 CEA, Saclay, France 1000–10 000 AU distance from the Sun, lation of minor bodies that agglomerated 7 Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium and the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt at in the protoplanetary disc from inter- 8 Deutsches Zentrum für Luft und 30–50 AU from the Sun. The latter is con- stellar dust some 4.6 billion years ago. Raumfahrt, Germany sidered to be also the birthplace of most Comets can thus be considered as fossil 9 Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) – records from the formation of our Solar System. Of course, any fossil on Earth Osservatorio di Arcetri, Italy * The ESO observations were the result of a world- wide scientific cooperation involving the following has been subject of some type of “weath- colleagues: Michael A’Hearn (University of Maryland, ering”. Similarly cometary nuclei have not USA), Claude Arpigny (Université de Liége, Belgium), survived 4.5 billion years in the Solar Sys- Anita Cochran (McDonald Observatory USA), tem without any changes. Their upper Catherine Delahodde (University of Florida, USA), Yanga Fernandez (University of Central Florida, USA), surface layers of a few metres thickness Damien Hutsemekers (Université de Liège, Belgium), experience evolutionary modifications Hideyo Kawakita (Gunma Astronomical Observatory, due to cometary activity, space weather- Japan), Jörg Knollenberg (Deutsches Zentrum für ing and collisions with other minor bod- Luft und Raumfahrt, Germany), Ludmilla Kolokolova (University of Maryland, USA), Mike Kretlow ies. Hence it is not surprising that comets (Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, have very high priority on the target lists Germany), Michael Küppers (Max-Planck-Institut für of interplanetary missions of the national Sonnensystemforschung, Germany), Ekkehard Kührt and international space agencies: trig- (Deutsches Zentrumfür Luft und Raumfahrt, Germany), Luisa Lara (Instituto de Astrofísica de gered by Halley’s comet’s encounter of a Canarias, Spain), Javier Licandro (Instituto de fleet of five spacecraft in 1986, four more Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain), Casey Lisse (The comets were explored by man-made John Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laborato- scientific instrumentation in fly-by mis- ry, USA), Karen Meech (Universitiy of Hawaii, USA), Rita Schulz (ESTEC, the Netherlands), Gerhard sions up to the last year. At this point, the Schwehm (ESTEC, the Netherlands), Michael Sterzik exploration of comets with ground-based (ESO), Joachim A. Stüwe (Universiteit Leiden, the telescopes and fly-by spacecraft had Netherlands), Isabelle Surdej (Université de Liège, resulted in a cornucopia of many, some- Belgium), Diane Wooden (NASA Ames Research Center, USA) and Jean-Marc Zucconi (Besançon, times fairly sophisticated detailed obser- France). vations. The most important parameters The Messenger 121 – September 2005 11 Reports from Observers Käufl H.-U. et al., Deep Impact at ESO Telescopes of a solar-system body, density and thus mass and the tensile strength of surface and interior, however, were the subjects of theoretical conjectures, but remained basically undetermined. It was thus im- portant to take the next logical step: 2005 has seen a new flavour of cometary ex- ploration, Deep Impact, an active experi- ment with a cometary nucleus. The Deep Impact mission On 4 July 2005, NASA’s discovery mis- sion Deep Impact (DI) encountered Comet 9P/Tempel 1, releasing a 370 kg copper probe at the comet (A’Hearn 2005). The probe was hit by the comet nucleus at a speed of 10.2 km/s and penetrated into the upper surface layers of the nucleus while the mother spacecraft flew by the nucleus at a distance of about 500 km observing the event with three on-board remote sensing experiments, a wide- and a narrow-field camera (visible wave- length range) and a near-infrared imaging spectrometer (1–5 micron). The target comet, 9P/Tempel 1, is a medium-bright, slowly rotating (41 h), medium-size (> 7.5 km diameter), low-albedo (8 %) short-period comet, most likely originating in the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt. During the impact the kinetic energy released by the Figure 1: Comet 9P/Tempel 1 imaged 67 seconds impactor was 19 GigaJoule or 5 300 kWh after it obliterated Deep Impact’s impactor spacecraft. The image was taken by the high-resolution camera (this amount of energy is equivalent to on the mission’s fly-by spacecraft. The image reveals the biannual electricity consumption by topographic features, including ridges, scalloped the author in his apartment for which edges and possibly impact craters formed long ago. the local public utility company charges First light from the impact flash arrived on Earth at 05:52:03.3 UT. For ESO telescopes the comet had approximately 900 €. Or it is slightly more just set (see text). than the equivalent of an Airbus A380 Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD. airplane flying at cruise speed – pick the unit which is more familiar to you!). mission, the spacecraft could perform complementary means to guarantee the only a short monitoring campaign of the expected science return and the success Models describing the subsequent crater target peaking in an approximately of the mission. Hence, they formed an formation resulting from this experiment 800 sec long period around close en- integral part of the DI mission concept gave a wide range of predictions, from the counter, when the impact area was and have been coordinated world-wide by comet swallowing the impactor with vir- in direct view of the instruments on board a dedicated mission scientist (Karen tually no effects, to complete disruption of the fly-by spacecraft. Figure 1 shows Meech, University of Hawaii, see Meech the nucleus. The most likely models pre- an example of images taken by the fly-by 2005). Due to the limitations of man-made dicted a crater of football stadium size, an spacecraft. interplanetary spacecraft a short-period impact flash, an ejecta plume with a comet had to be picked for this experi- high probability that pristine material from ment. The comet should have a perihelion the inner “original” layers is released dur- Need for earth-based DI science not too far from our Earth’s orbit. The ing and after impact, when the Sun will encounter could only take place close to illuminate this newly formed active region Given the limited scope of the on-board a crossing point of the cometary orbit on the nucleus. Under lucky circum- instrumentation (described in Hampton, with the orbital plane of the Earth, the stances even a new long-lasting active 2005) and the short visibility of the impact Ecliptic. For Comet 9P/Tempel 1, one of region might have been created by area from the spacecraft, Earth-based the few comets fitting the set of con- the impact. Due to the fly-by nature of the observations were the most important straints, perihelion passage (July 5, 2005) 12 The Messenger 121 – September 2005 Figure 2: The partici- pants of the ESO-Deep- Impact preparatory workshop in February 2004. was very close to the descending node refer to Comet 73P/Schwassmann- critical event such as Deep Impact, this crossing (July 7, 2005).
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