Characterizing the physical and chemical behaviour of comet 46P/Wirtanen

Dennis Bodewits (1) , Damian Christian (2) , Michael Kelley (3) , Jian Yang Li (4) , Silvia Protopapa (5) , Tony Farnham (3) , Kip Kuntz (6) , Dimitra Koutroumpa (7) , Jennifer Carter (8) , Davide Farnocchia (9) , Tim Lister (10) , Matthew Knight (3) , John Noonan (11) , Walt Harris (11) , Joel Parker (5) , Kathleen Mandt (12) , Charles Bell

1 Department of Physics [Auburn]
2 Department of Physics and Astronomy [Northridge]
3 Department of Astronomy [College Park]
4 PSI - Planetary Science Institute [Tucson]
5 SwRI - Southwest Research Institute [Boulder]
6 JHU - Johns Hopkins University
7 HELIOS - LATMOS
8 University of Leicester
9 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
10 LCO - Las Cumbres Observatory
11 LPL - Lunar and Planetary Laboratory [Tucson]
12 APL - Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory [Laurel, MD]

Comet nuclei are remnants from the planet formation era but cannot be observed directly from Earth. When they approach the Sun a cloud of gas dust obscures their nuclei, and their properties must be inferred from gas and dust surrounding them. Understanding the connection between the coma and nucleus is therefore critical. Comet 46P/Wirtanen passed Earth with an historic closest approach distance of 0.077 au (12 million km) on Dec. 16, 2018. Its apparition was widely anticipated by planetary scientists and was the target of a world-wide observing campaign. Studies of comet Wirtanen around the time of its close approach to Earth provided spatial resolutions high enough to permit valuable comparisons to the Rosetta observations of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and the Deep Impact/EPOXI fly-by results of 103P/Hartley 2. In this contribution, we will summarize the preliminary results from our global campaign that combined telescopes in and around Earth to characterize the physical and chemical behavior of comet 46P/Wirtanen.

Domaines: Planète et Univers [physics]

Dennis Bodewits, Damian Christian, Michael Kelley, Jian Yang Li, Silvia Protopapa, et al.. Characterizing the physical and chemical behaviour of comet 46P/Wirtanen. EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019, Sep 2019, Genève, Switzerland. EPSC Abstracts, 13, pp.EPSC-DPS2019-761-1. ⟨hal-02938902⟩