Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....40.6009c&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #40, #60.09; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.563
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
On the September 5th 2008 ESA's Rosetta spacecraft flew-by 2867 Steins. Steins was by VIRTIS observed in two consecutive phases: when the distance from the asteroid was between 223000 km and 20700 km , the spectrophotometric lightcurve was acquired, while from 2800 km to 1100 km, passing through the closest approach, high spatial resolution hyperspectral images were obtained. During these observations, the solar phase angle changed, passing through the opposition effect ì. The spectrophometric lightcurve was measured during the approach to the asteroid, when the its apparent size was less than a VIRTIS-M pixel. These observations were scheduled to span over a period of time of 6.5 h, which was enough to follow an entire Steins rotation.
During the observations, the solar phase angle was quite constant corresponding to 38°.
These are the first observations in 288 spectral bands, between 0.25-5 micron, of an asteroid covering the whole rotational period. Thanks to this data set we have investigated the spectral behavior of the asteroid's surface through a whole rotation. The second phase allowed to perform multispectral imaging. Despite the intrinsic difficulties for an imaging spectrometer to operate during a fast (8.6 km/s) and close (800km) flyby, VIRTIS-M was able to acquire high signal/noise hyperspectral data of different regions of Steins. Each pixel of the VIRTIS-M spectrometer consists of 864 spectral bands, allowing to measure surface reflectance with a spectral resolution of about 2 nm in the VIS and 10 nm in the IR. The spatial resolution on the asteroid surface is of the order of 300 m/pix. Using this data set we will investigate the spectral behavior of the asteroid's surface , which appear to have a red slope in the visible range. The high spectral and spatial resolution allows to map the distribution of different asteroid compositional units.
Coradini Angioletta
Rosetta VIRTIS Team
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