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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Acknowledgements
This work was based on observations made with the 0.80 m IAC80 Telescope at Observatorio del Teide of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (Tenerife, Spain), and with the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) operated on the island of La Palma by the Centro Galileo Galilei of the INAF (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica) at the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. We also thank E. Oliva for kindly providing us with the observations of 67P/C–G taken on March 27, 2003 during DDT. The research carried out has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología under contract ESP2003-00357. P. J. Gutiérrez acknowledges the European Space Agency for an External Research Fellowship at LAM.
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Lara, L., de León, J., Licandro, J. et al. Dust Activity in Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from February 20 to April 20, 2003. Earth Moon Planet 97, 165–175 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11038-006-9067-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11038-006-9067-9