Deep Impact's Small Telescope Science Program: Phase II Results

Details Deep Impact's Small Telescope Science Program: Phase II Results Deep Impact's Small Telescope Science Program: Phase II Results

Oct 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.2704m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #27.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.463

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

From February, 2000 through August, 2005, the Deep Impact mission's science and education and public outreach team received images of Comet 9P/Tempel 1 from small telescope owners around the world. Deep Impact explored the composition and structure of the nucleus of Comet Tempel 1. The Small Telescope Program (STSP) engaged technically proficient observers to complement and augment the comet's characterization carried out by large telescopes in support of planning and analysis of the mission results. The first phase of the program is reported in McLaughlin et al. 2004. Over 3700 images of Tempel 1 from 64 observers were submitted to the second phase of STSP between December 2004 and August 2005. Telescopes ranging in size from 10 - 80 cm, with CCD cameras and a range of filters including unfiltered, V, R (625-740 nm) and I (750-1000 nm) filters were used. Both calibrated and uncalibrated images were submitted. We report on the cataloging and analysis of this dataset. The field of view and orientation of each image was measured using catalogue overlays generated by the Astrometrica program. The orientation of the images and the star fields are identified, the star fluxes are calculated and the counts are converted to instrumental magnitude. Scaling to apparent photometric magnitude is made from magnitudes available in the USNO-B1.0 star catalog. Photometry of the comet was then determined for a circular aperture of radius of 27,000 km around the comet in each filter. We examine the resulting magnitudes as a function of time before perihelion and calculate Af [?], a measurement of dust activity. Dust activity increased by a factor of 6 between 203 and 62 days before perihelion, then decreased by >2x, 2 days before perihelion. At impact it increased by 3x. This work is supported by NASA grant NNX07AG22G.

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