Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Sep 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.2009a&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #20.09
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
We present observations of the dust trail of the Rosetta target comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko during 2008 in visible and mid-infrared light. We observed in visible light in July 2008 with the Wide Field Imager at the ESO/MPG 2.2m-telescope on La Silla, and in the mid- to far-infrared (24 and 70 micron) in November 2008 with the MIPS instrument on board the Spitzer Space Telescope. The comet was at heliocentric distances of 2.7 AU in July 2008 and 1.7 AU in November 2008. The observations show the comet nucleus, developing coma, and sections of the dust trail.
At 70 micron the trail was not detected, indicating either a significantly elevated colour temperature due to grains large enough to support temperature gradients across their surface, or a decrease of emissivity with wavelength. Such an emissivity effect could be explained by the predominance of small (< 100 micron) grains in the dust trail that would have to be recently-produced by fragmentation of larger particles.
We constrain the dust size distribution, emission speeds, and production rates as functions of time from iterative comparison of the observations with simulated images.
This work is based on observations made with the MPG/ESO 2.2m telescope at the La Silla Observatory under programme ID 081.A-9019(A), and with the Spitzer Space Telescope under programme ID 50650. Spitzer is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA.
Agarwal Jessica
Boehnhardt Hermann
Gruen Eberhard
Laureijs René
Reach William T.
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