Mercury's Exosphere Observation Using Espadons/CFHT

Details Mercury's Exosphere Observation Using Espadons/CFHT Mercury's Exosphere Observation Using Espadons/CFHT

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.5707d&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #57.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.589

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Before the arrival of Messenger at Mercury in 2008, the only source of information available on Mercury's environment is observations done from ground based observatories. These observations provided a now large data set on Mercury's exosphere and in particular of its sodium component originally discovered by Potter et al. (Science, 1985). Two other elements have been discovered in the same way: the potassium (Potter et al., Icarus 1986) and the calcium (Bida et al. 2000). All this information helped us to much better understand the formation of Mercury's exosphere. Moreover, it helps to design of the payload of the forthcoming Bepi-Colombo mission.
High resolution spectroscopy has been obtained on nights 16, 17 and 18 June 2006, at the 3.6-m CFHT telescope on top of Mauna Kea (Hawaii) using the Espadon instrument in its echelle spectroscopy mode. Configuration of Mercury was very favourable with the planet close to maximum elongation and high illumination of Na and K. The disk of the planet has been scanned for spatial variation of the exospheric species. The large spectral range of Espadons (370 to 1050 nm) and high resolution (R=68000) allow simultaneous measurements of the integrated column density of Na and K as well as search for non-identified species of Mercury's exosphere. Data will be presented and discussed.

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