Comet Hartley 2 as Seen Up Close

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

The Deep Impact flyby spacecraft will have flown past comet 103P/Hartley 2 on 4 Nov 2010 to execute the Deep Impact eXtended Investigation (DIXI), the second half of the EPOXI mission. This will be the first opportunity to study two, quite different, cometary nuclei with the same instruments under similar conditions. Since Hartley 2 has a very small nucleus, very active for its size, the behavior must be very different from the behavior of Tempel 1, which has a large, relatively inactive nucleus. Some differences are already clear in the images from early approach, which show very large and slow variations in the production of CN relative to the dust, but the most dramatic differences will have been seen near closest approach. We might expect differences in the nuclear surface features, in the relative importance of jets (already seen in CN by ground-based observers), in the chemical heterogeneity of the outgassing, etc. We will present a summary of the key differences between a large nucleus with low activity and a small nucleus with high activity.
Funded by NASA.

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