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Evolution of the Dust Coma in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko Before 2009 Perihelion | | G. P. Tozzi
; P. Patriarchi
; H. Boehnhardt
; J.-B. Vincent
; J. Licandro
; L. Kolokolova
; R. Schulz
; J. Stüwe
; | | Date: |
2 May 2011 | | Abstract: | Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is the main target of ESA’s Rosetta mission
and will be encountered in May 2014. As the spacecraft shall be in orbit the
comet nucleus before and after release of the lander {it Philae}, it is
necessary necessary to know the conditions in the coma. Study the dust
environment, including the dust production rate and its variations along its
preperihelion orbit. The comet was observed during its approach to the Sun on
four epochs between early-June 2008 and mid-January 2009, over a large range of
heliocentric distances that will be covered by the mission in 2014. An
anomalous enhancement of the coma dust density was measured towards the comet
nucleus. The scalelength of this enhancement increased with decreasing
heliocentric distance of the comet. This is interpreted as a result of an
unusually slow expansion of the dust coma. Assuming a spherical symmetric coma,
the average amount of dust as well as its ejection velocity have been derived.
The latter increases exponentially with decreasing heliocentric distance (
h),
ranging from about 1 m/s at 3 AU to about 25-35 m/s at 1.4 AU. Based on these
results we describe the dust environment at those nucleocentric distances at
which the spacecraft will presumably be in orbit.
Astronomy and Astrophysics, in press | | Source: | arXiv, 1105.0329 | | Services: | Forum | Review | PDF | Favorites | |
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