Mineralogic Mapping of Asteroid 4 Vesta

Physics

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

Hst Proposal Id #7443 Solar System

Scientific paper

The 1997 opposition of asteroid 4 Vesta offers an important opprtunity to map its diverse mineralogy with uniquely high contrast and to investigate more thoroughly the newly discovered major topographic feature at the south pole. The extremely high signal-to-noise { 300-400} imaging, broad wavelength coverage {0.95-2.22 microns} and distinctive narrow band filters provided by NICMOS allow the first discrimination of the mineralogies of lava flow regions between eucrite, howardite, and diogenite assemblages. The relative abundances and extents of these assemblages will reveal Vesta's volcanic and impact history. NICMOS can also discover regions where olivine may have been excavated to the surface by impacts penetrating into the mantle of Vesta. Such deep penetration events, although rare on the Moon, may be more common on smaller planetary worlds. Previous HST/WFPC2 visible maps of Vesta generated by members of our team exhibit one or more equatorial impact basins and an area of especially severe impact e xcavation near Vesta's south pole. The 1997 opposition offers the best opportunity to study this region until the year 2000. With the expected very high signal-to-noise images and photometric accuracy preserved by associated image processing, we expect to derive quantitative abundances of these four assemblages in each pixel to at least +/-10%.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Mineralogic Mapping of Asteroid 4 Vesta does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Mineralogic Mapping of Asteroid 4 Vesta, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Mineralogic Mapping of Asteroid 4 Vesta will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-895699

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.