Dust Activity in Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from February 20 to April 20, 2003 |
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Authors: | L M Lara J de León J Licandro P J Gutiérrez |
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Institution: | (1) Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, CSIC, P.O. Box 3004, 18080 Granada, Spain;(2) Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, C/ Vía Láctea s/n, 38200 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain;(3) Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, P.O. Box 321, 38700 Santa Cruz de La Palma, Tenerife, Spain |
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Abstract: | Broadband imaging of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko has provided more data on the characterisation of the target of the ESA
Rosetta Mission. The comet monitoring between r
h=2.37 and r
h=2.78 AU postperihelion shows a prominent dust coma which extends up to ≈ 25,000 km from the nucleus, and a long dust structure
in approximately anti-tail direction, reaching at least 230,000 km, identified as a neck-line structure. The non-isotropic
dust emission is detected from the structures in the inner coma, and it is reflected on the slope of linear fits of surface
brightness profiles vs. cometocentric projected distance in log–log representation as m ≈ 0.83−0.941. Besides the long dust spike at position angle of 295°, the morphological study of the dust coma confirms the
presence of two structures at position angles of
95 and
195° where the overabundance of dust can be as high as 50% at ρ ≤ 30,000 km. The A
f ρ parameter derived from our R broadband data is 26.0 and 29.8 cm at r
h=2.37 and 2.48 AU postperihelion. The dust reflectivity S′(λ), a measurement of the dust colour, is 0.061±0.019, a rather neutral colour. |
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Keywords: | Comets: comet Churyumov– Gerasimenko Comets: general |
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