Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Sep 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.3502d&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #35.02
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Before the arrival of Messenger and Bepi Colombo at Mercury, the only source of information available on Mercury's environment is observations done from ground based observatories. We performed high spectral resolution observations of the Mercury's exosphere on the 30th and 31st October 2005 using the ESO-NTT telescope, La Silla, Chile. The large spectral range, 385-855 nm of the spectrograph EMMI provides a unique opportunity to search for non-identified species in the Hermian's environment. In this paper, we report a tentative detection of atomic aluminium in the exosphere of Mercury. This detection should be confirmed by further observations and can be used as an upper limit for this element in Mercury's exosphere. We also estimate upper limit for the column densities of Fe and Si exospheric atoms. Detection of Al, a refractory element, if confirmed, as well as its high exospheric abundance (between 2 to 18) with respect to Ca would suggest either an unexpected surface composition or a relation between exosphere and surface composition that is not well understood.
Doressoundiram Alain
LeBlanc Francis
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