SOFIA INFRARED SPECTROPHOTOMETRY of COMET C/2012 K1 (PAN-STARRS) Charles E
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1 Characterization of Cometary Activity of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Characterization of cometary activity of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet Abstract After 2.5 years from the end of the mission, the data provided by the ESA/Rosetta mission still leads to important results about 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (hereafter 67P), belonging to the Jupiter Family Comets. Since comets are among the most primitive bodies of the Solar System, the understanding of their formation and evolution gives important clues about the early stages of our planetary system, including the scenarios of water delivery to Earth. At the present state of knowledge, 67P’s activity has been characterized by measuring the physical properties of the gas and dust coma, by detecting water ice patches on the nucleus surface and by analyzing some peculiar events, such as outbursts. We propose an ISSI International Team to build a more complete scenario of the 67P activity during different stages of its orbit. The retrieved results in terms of dust emission, morphology and composition will be linked together in order to offer new insights about 67P formation and evolution. In particular the main goals of the project are: 1. Retrieval of the activity degree of different 67P geomorphological nucleus regions in different time periods, by reconstructing the motion of the dust particles revealed in the coma; 2. Identification of the main drivers of cometary activity, by studying the link between cometary activity and illumination/local time, dust morphology, surface geomorphology, dust composition. The project will shed light on how (and if) cometary activity is related to surface geology and/or composition or is just driven by local illumination. -
Stardust Comet Flyby
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION Stardust Comet Flyby Press Kit January 2004 Contacts Don Savage Policy/Program Management 202/358-1727 NASA Headquarters, Washington DC Agle Stardust Mission 818/393-9011 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Vince Stricherz Science Investigation 206/543-2580 University of Washington, Seattle, WA Contents General Release ……………………………………......………….......................…...…… 3 Media Services Information ……………………….................…………….................……. 5 Quick Facts …………………………………………..................………....…........…....….. 6 Why Stardust?..................…………………………..................………….....………......... 7 Other Comet Missions ....................................................................................... 10 NASA's Discovery Program ............................................................................... 12 Mission Overview …………………………………….................……….....……........…… 15 Spacecraft ………………………………………………..................…..……........……… 25 Science Objectives …………………………………..................……………...…........….. 34 Program/Project Management …………………………...................…..…..………...... 37 1 2 GENERAL RELEASE: NASA COMET HUNTER CLOSING ON QUARRY Having trekked 3.2 billion kilometers (2 billion miles) across cold, radiation-charged and interstellar-dust-swept space in just under five years, NASA's Stardust spacecraft is closing in on the main target of its mission -- a comet flyby. "As the saying goes, 'We are good to go,'" said project manager Tom Duxbury at NASA's Jet -
Dust-To-Gas and Refractory-To-Ice Mass Ratios of Comet 67P
Dust-to-Gas and Refractory-to-Ice Mass Ratios of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from Rosetta Observations Mathieu Choukroun, Kathrin Altwegg, Ekkehard Kührt, Nicolas Biver, Dominique Bockelée-Morvan, Joanna Drążkowska, Alain Hérique, Martin Hilchenbach, Raphael Marschall, Martin Pätzold, et al. To cite this version: Mathieu Choukroun, Kathrin Altwegg, Ekkehard Kührt, Nicolas Biver, Dominique Bockelée-Morvan, et al.. Dust-to-Gas and Refractory-to-Ice Mass Ratios of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from Rosetta Observations. Journal Space Science Reviews, 2020, 10.1007/s11214-020-00662-1. hal- 03021621 HAL Id: hal-03021621 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03021621 Submitted on 29 Aug 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution| 4.0 International License Space Sci Rev (2020) 216:44 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00662-1 Dust-to-Gas and Refractory-to-Ice Mass Ratios of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from Rosetta Observations Mathieu Choukroun1 · Kathrin Altwegg2 · Ekkehard Kührt3 · Nicolas Biver4 · Dominique Bockelée-Morvan4 · Joanna Dra˙ ˛zkowska5 · Alain Hérique6 · Martin Hilchenbach7 · Raphael Marschall8 · Martin Pätzold9 · Matthew G.G.T. Taylor10 · Nicolas Thomas2 Received: 17 May 2019 / Accepted: 19 March 2020 / Published online: 8 April 2020 © The Author(s) 2020 Abstract This chapter reviews the estimates of the dust-to-gas and refractory-to-ice mass ratios derived from Rosetta measurements in the lost materials and the nucleus of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, respectively. -
Rosetta Observations of Plasma and Dust at Comet 67P
Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology 1989 Rosetta Observations of Plasma and Dust at Comet 67P FREDRIK LEFFE JOHANSSON ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UPSALIENSIS ISSN 1651-6214 ISBN 978-91-513-1070-1 UPPSALA urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-425953 2020 Dissertation presented at Uppsala University to be publicly examined on Zoom, Friday, 15 January 2021 at 13:15 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The examination will be conducted in English. Faculty examiner: Dr. Nicolas André (IRAP, Toulouse, France). Online defence: https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/67552597754 Contact person for questions about participation is Prof. Mats André 0707-792072 Abstract Johansson, F. L. 2020. Rosetta Observations of Plasma and Dust at Comet 67P. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology 1989. 35 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-513-1070-1. In-situ observations of cometary plasma are not made because they are easy. The historic ESA Rosetta mission was launched in 2004 and traversed space for ten years before arriving at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which it studied in unprecedented detail for two years. For the Rosetta Dual Langmuir Probe Experiment (LAP), the challenge was increased by the sensors being situated on short booms near a significantly negatively charged spacecraft, which deflects low-energy charged particles away from our instrument. To disentangle the cometary plasma signature in our signal, we create a charging model for the particular design of the Rosetta spacecraft through 3D Particle-in-Cell/hybrid spacecraft-plasma interaction simulations, which also can be applicable to similarly designed spacecraft in cold plasma environments. -
Project Pan-STARRS and the Outer Solar System
Project Pan-STARRS and the Outer Solar System David Jewitt Institute for Astronomy, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822 ABSTRACT Pan-STARRS, a funded project to repeatedly survey the entire visible sky to faint limiting magnitudes (mR ∼ 24), will have a substantial impact on the study of the Kuiper Belt and outer solar system. We briefly review the Pan- STARRS design philosophy and sketch some of the planetary science areas in which we expect this facility to make its mark. Pan-STARRS will find ∼20,000 Kuiper Belt Objects within the first year of operation and will obtain accurate astrometry for all of them on a weekly or faster cycle. We expect that it will revolutionise our knowledge of the contents and dynamical structure of the outer solar system. Subject headings: Surveys, Kuiper Belt, comets 1. Introduction to Pan-STARRS Project Pan-STARRS (short for Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response Sys- tem) is a collaboration between the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the Maui High Performance Computer Center, and Science Ap- plications International Corporation. The Principal Investigator for the project, for which funding started in the fall of 2002, is Nick Kaiser of the Institute for Astronomy. Operations should begin by 2007. The science objectives of Pan-STARRS span the full range from planetary to cosmolog- ical. The instrument will conduct a survey of the solar system that is staggering in power compared to anything yet attempted. A useful measure of the raw survey power, SP , of a telescope is given by AΩ SP = (1) θ2 where A [m2] is the collecting area of the telescope primary, Ω [deg2] is the solid angle that is imaged and θ [arcsec] is the full-width at half maximum (FWHM) of the images { 2 { produced by the telescope. -
Stardust Comet Dust Resembles Asteroid Materials 24 January 2008
Stardust comet dust resembles asteroid materials 24 January 2008 treasure trove of stardust from other stars and other ancient materials. But in the case of Wild 2, that simply is not the case. By comparing the Stardust samples to cometary interplanetary dust particles (CP IDPs), the team found that two silicate materials normally found in cometary IDPs, together with other primitive materials including presolar stardust grains from other stars, have not been found in the abundances that might be expected in a Kuiper Belt comet like Getting into the details: Stardust impact tracks and light Wild 2. The high-speed capture of the Stardust gas gun impacts of sulfide in aerogel both display metal particles may be partly responsible; but extra beads with sulfide rims indicating that GEMS-like objects refractory components that formed in the inner in Stardust are generated by impact mixing of comet solar nebula within a few astronomical units of the dust with silica aerogel. (left) Stardust GEMS-like sun, indicate that the Stardust material resembles material and (right) light gas gun shot GEM-like material. chondritic meteorites from the asteroid belt. GEMS in cometary IDPs do not contain sulfide-rimmed metal inclusions. [Image credit: Hope Ishii, LLNL] “The material is a lot less primitive and more altered than materials we have gathered through high altitude capture in our own stratosphere from a variety of comets,” said LLNL’s Hope Ishii, lead Contrary to expectations for a small icy body, much author of the research that appears in the Jan. 25 of the comet dust returned by the Stardust mission edition of the journal, Science. -
Ice & Stone 2020
Ice & Stone 2020 WEEK 17: APRIL 19-25, 2020 Presented by The Earthrise Institute # 17 Authored by Alan Hale This week in history APRIL 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 APRIL 20, 1910: Comet 1P/Halley passes through perihelion at a heliocentric distance of 0.587 AU. Halley’s 1910 return, which is described in a previous “Special Topics” presentation, was quite favorable, with a close approach to Earth (0.15 AU) and the exhibiting of the longest cometary tail ever recorded. APRIL 20, 2025: NASA’s Lucy mission is scheduled to pass by the main belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson. Lucy is discussed in a previous “Special Topics” presentation. APRIL 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 APRIL 21, 2024: Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is predicted to pass through perihelion at a heliocentric distance of 0.781 AU. This comet, with a discussion of its viewing prospects for 2024, is a previous “Comet of the Week.” APRIL 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 APRIL 22, 2020: The annual Lyrid meteor shower should be at its peak. Normally this shower is fairly weak, with a peak rate of not much more than 10 meteors per hour, but has been known to exhibit significantly stronger activity on occasion. The moon is at its “new” phase on April 23 this year and thus the viewing circumstances are very good. COVER IMAGE CREDIT: Front and back cover: This artist’s conception shows how families of asteroids are created. Over the history of our solar system, catastrophic collisions between asteroids located in the belt between Mars and Jupiter have formed families of objects on similar orbits around the sun. -
Symposium on Telescope Science
Proceedings for the 26th Annual Conference of the Society for Astronomical Sciences Symposium on Telescope Science Editors: Brian D. Warner Jerry Foote David A. Kenyon Dale Mais May 22-24, 2007 Northwoods Resort, Big Bear Lake, CA Reprints of Papers Distribution of reprints of papers by any author of a given paper, either before or after the publication of the proceedings is allowed under the following guidelines. 1. The copyright remains with the author(s). 2. Under no circumstances may anyone other than the author(s) of a paper distribute a reprint without the express written permission of all author(s) of the paper. 3. Limited excerpts may be used in a review of the reprint as long as the inclusion of the excerpts is NOT used to make or imply an endorsement by the Society for Astronomical Sciences of any product or service. Notice The preceding “Reprint of Papers” supersedes the one that appeared in the original print version Disclaimer The acceptance of a paper for the SAS proceedings can not be used to imply or infer an endorsement by the Society for Astronomical Sciences of any product, service, or method mentioned in the paper. Published by the Society for Astronomical Sciences, Inc. First printed: May 2007 ISBN: 0-9714693-6-9 Table of Contents Table of Contents PREFACE 7 CONFERENCE SPONSORS 9 Submitted Papers THE OLIN EGGEN PROJECT ARNE HENDEN 13 AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL ASTRONOMER COLLABORATION EXOPLANET RESEARCH PROGRAMS AND TECHNIQUES RON BISSINGER 17 EXOPLANET OBSERVING TIPS BRUCE L. GARY 23 STUDY OF CEPHEID VARIABLES AS A JOINT SPECTROSCOPY PROJECT THOMAS C. -
Interstellar Interlopers Two Recently Sighted Space Rocks That Came from Beyond the Solar System Have Puzzled Astronomers
A S T R O N O MY InterstellarInterstellar Interlopers Two recently sighted space rocks that came from beyond the solar system have puzzled astronomers 42 Scientific American, October 2020 © 2020 Scientific American 1I/‘OUMUAMUA, the frst interstellar object ever observed in the solar system, passed close to Earth in 2017. InterstellarInterlopers Interlopers Two recently sighted space rocks that came from beyond the solar system have puzzled astronomers By David Jewitt and Amaya Moro-Martín Illustrations by Ron Miller October 2020, ScientificAmerican.com 43 © 2020 Scientific American David Jewitt is an astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studies the primitive bodies of the solar system and beyond. Amaya Moro-Martín is an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. She investigates planetary systems and extrasolar comets. ATE IN THE EVENING OF OCTOBER 24, 2017, AN E-MAIL ARRIVED CONTAINING tantalizing news of the heavens. Astronomer Davide Farnocchia of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was writing to one of us (Jewitt) about a new object in the sky with a very strange trajectory. Discovered six days earli- er by University of Hawaii astronomer Robert Weryk, the object, initially dubbed P10Ee5V, was traveling so fast that the sun could not keep it in orbit. Instead of its predicted path being a closed ellipse, its orbit was open, indicating that it would never return. “We still need more data,” Farnocchia wrote, “but the orbit appears to be hyperbolic.” Within a few hours, Jewitt wrote to Jane Luu, a long-time collaborator with Norwegian connections, about observing the new object with the Nordic Optical Telescope in LSpain. -
Perturbation of the Oort Cloud by Close Stellar Encounter with Gliese 710
Bachelor Thesis University of Groningen Kapteyn Astronomical Institute Perturbation of the Oort Cloud by Close Stellar Encounter with Gliese 710 August 5, 2019 Author: Rens Juris Tesink Supervisors: Kateryna Frantseva and Nickolas Oberg Abstract Context: Our Sun is thought to have an Oort cloud, a spherically symmetric shell of roughly 1011 comets orbiting with semi major axes between ∼ 5 × 103 AU and 1 × 105 AU. It is thought to be possible that other stars also possess comet clouds. Gliese 710 is a star expected to have a close encounter with the Sun in 1.35 Myrs. Aims: To simulate the comet clouds around the Sun and Gliese 710 and investigate the effect of the close encounter. Method: Two REBOUND N-body simulations were used with the help of Gaia DR2 data. Simulation 1 had a total integration time of 4 Myr, a time-step of 1 yr, and 10,000 comets in each comet cloud. And Simulation 2 had a total integration time of 80,000 yr, a time-step of 0.01 yr, and 100,000 comets in each comet cloud. Results: Simulation 2 revealed a 1.7% increase in the semi-major axis at time of closest approach and a population loss of 0.019% - 0.117% for the Oort cloud. There was no statistically significant net change of the inclination of the comets during this encounter and a 0.14% increase in the eccentricity at the time of closest approach. Contents 1 Introduction 3 1.1 Comets . .3 1.2 New comets and the Oort cloud . .5 1.3 Structure of the Oort cloud . -
Do Comets Have Chondrules and Cais? Evidence from the Leonid Meteors
Meteoritics & Planetary Science 39, Nr 10, 1733–1740 (2004) Abstract available online at http://meteoritics.org Do comets have chondrules and CAIs? Evidence from the Leonid meteors Timothy D. SWINDLE1* and Humberto CAMPINS1, 2 1Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721–0092, USA 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida 32816, USA *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] (Received 10 June 2003; revision accepted 3 August 2004) Abstract–Chondrules, silicate spheres typically 0.1 to 1 mm in diameter, are the most abundant constituents in the most common meteorites falling on Earth, the ordinary chondrites. In addition, many primitive meteorites have calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs). The question of whether comets have chondrules or CAIs is relevant to understanding what the interior of a comet is like and what a cometary meteorite might be like. In addition, one prominent model for forming chondrules and CAIs, the X-wind model, predicts their presence in comets, while most other models do not. At present, the best way to search for chondrules and CAIs in comets is through meteor showers derived from comets, in particular, the Leonid meteor shower. Evidence potentially could be found in the overall mass distribution of the shower, in chemical analyses of meteors, or in light curves. There is no evidence for a chondrule abundance in the Leonid meteors similar to that found in chondritic meteorites. There is intriguing evidence for chondrule- or CAI-sized objects in a small fraction of the light curves, but further work is required to generate a definitive test. -
Week 5: January 26-February 1, 2020
5# Ice & Stone 2020 Week 5: January 26-February 1, 2020 Presented by The Earthrise Institute About Ice And Stone 2020 It is my pleasure to welcome all educators, students, topics include: main-belt asteroids, near-Earth asteroids, and anybody else who might be interested, to Ice and “Great Comets,” spacecraft visits (both past and Stone 2020. This is an educational package I have put future), meteorites, and “small bodies” in popular together to cover the so-called “small bodies” of the literature and music. solar system, which in general means asteroids and comets, although this also includes the small moons of Throughout 2020 there will be various comets that are the various planets as well as meteors, meteorites, and visible in our skies and various asteroids passing by Earth interplanetary dust. Although these objects may be -- some of which are already known, some of which “small” compared to the planets of our solar system, will be discovered “in the act” -- and there will also be they are nevertheless of high interest and importance various asteroids of the main asteroid belt that are visible for several reasons, including: as well as “occultations” of stars by various asteroids visible from certain locations on Earth’s surface. Ice a) they are believed to be the “leftovers” from the and Stone 2020 will make note of these occasions and formation of the solar system, so studying them provides appearances as they take place. The “Comet Resource valuable insights into our origins, including Earth and of Center” at the Earthrise web site contains information life on Earth, including ourselves; about the brighter comets that are visible in the sky at any given time and, for those who are interested, I will b) we have learned that this process isn’t over yet, and also occasionally share information about the goings-on that there are still objects out there that can impact in my life as I observe these comets.