Infrared Observations of Comet Dust

Details Infrared Observations of Comet Dust Infrared Observations of Comet Dust

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.3302k&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #33.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.545

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Comets are one of the best preserved reservoirs of material from the epoch of planet formation. The mineralogy of comet dust may be directly linked to the mineralogy of their formation zones in the early outer solar system. This thesis is an investigation of the properties of comet dust through analytical and observational techniques. To achieve this goal, we observed comets with multi-wavelength imaging, polarimetry, and spectroscopy, and created a program to model comet dust dynamics and simulate observations of comet comae, tails, and trails. An emphasis is placed on observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope. Spitzer observations of comet dust probes grain mineralogy, size, and structure, through modeled comae morphologies and spectral energy distributions. Dust properties are also constrained by scattered light observations, especially polarimetry, and a complete theory of comets must describe both the thermal emission properties (mid-infrared spectral energy distributions) and the scattered light properties (optical/near-infrared spectral energy distributions and polarization) of comet dust. To this end, we present: near-infrared polarimetry of nine comets; a Spitzer survey of comet dust trails, including an in-depth analysis of the dust trail of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; a Spitzer spectroscopy survey of comet dust and an analysis of the dust properties of comets 2P/Encke, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and C/2001 HT50 (LINEAR-NEAT); and an analysis of multi-epoch Spitzer images to assess the size distribution of dust ejected from comet 9P/Tempel 1 as a result of the collision with the Deep Impact spacecraft.
This dissertation research is supported by the National Science Foundation (AST-037446), the NASA Planetary Astronomy Program RTOP 344-32-21-04, JPL/Caltech Spitzer contracts 1256406, 1263741, and 1275835, the Spitzer Science Center Visiting Graduate Student Fellowship, and the U. Minnesota Graduate School Dissertation Fellowship.

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