Dust in the Coma and Trail of Spectacular Comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught)

Details Dust in the Coma and Trail of Spectacular Comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught) Dust in the Coma and Trail of Spectacular Comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught)

May 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007sptz.prop40812w&link_type=abstract

Spitzer Proposal ID #40812

Physics

Scientific paper

We propose a 15.6 hr project to study the dust of comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught). Comet McNaught dazzled Earth observers everywhere with an impressive post-perihelion dust tail. The dust production near perihelion, estimated to be greater than that of Hale-Bopp, allows for the opportunity to detect, for the first time, a dust trail from an Oort Cloud comet, owing greatly to the timing of the comet's perihelion passage and the lifetime of the Spitzer Space Telescope. With Spitzer IRS SEDs of comet McNaught's coma, still modestly bright at 3-4 AU, we can study the relationship between dust grain properties and coma activity, as water sublimation ceases during the comet's outbound journey. The proposed observations will observe the comet to full 5-37 micron IRS spectral energy distributions (SEDs) at 3.5 and 4.1 AU, from which we can constrain the dust mineralogy. We will image the comet with MIPS at 24 microns at 3.5, 4.1, and 6.5 AU. Using a large MIPS map at 3.5 AU, we will search for the comet's dust trail, direct evidence for the ejection of grains larger than 100 microns. We augment the 24 micron images with 170 micron images at 3.5 AU to the thermal emission from the largest grains. Using the MIPS images, we will search for small nucleus fragments (of order 100 m in radius) shed during its close (0.2 AU) encounter with the Sun. The following MIPS observations at 4.1 and 6.5 AU will help us determine a nucleus size for the comet, necessary to properly interpret the dust coma in our IRS spectra. The Spitzer McNaught data set will be of similar legacy-quality to that the ISO SWS data set on comet Hale-Bopp.

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