Comparative study of water ice exposures on cometary nuclei using multispectral imaging data

Nilda Oklay (1) , Jessica M. Sunshine (2) , Maurizio Pajola (3, 4) , Antoine Pommerol (5) , Jean-Baptiste Vincent (1) , Stefano Mottola (6) , Holger Sierks (1) , Sonia Fornasier (7) , M. Antonella Barucci (7) , Frank Preusker (6) , Frank Scholten (6) , Luisa M. Lara (8) , Cesare Barbieri (9) , Philippe L. Lamy (10) , Rafael Rodrigo (11, 12) , Detlef Koschny (13) , Hans Rickman (14, 15) , Michael F. A'Hearn (2) , Jean-Loup Bertaux (16) , Ivano Bertini (4) , Dennis Bodewits (2) , Gabriele Cremonese (17) , Vania da Deppo (18) , Björn J. R. Davidsson (19) , Stefano Debei (20) , Mariolino de Cecco (21) , Jakob Deller (1) , Marco Fulle (21) , Adeline Gicquel (1) , Olivier Groussin (10) , Pedro J. Gutiérrez (8) , Carsten Güttler (1) , I. Hall (1) , M. Hofmann (1) , Stubbe F. Hviid (6) , W.-H. Ip (22) , L. Jorda (10) , H. U. Keller (23) , J. Knollenberg (6) , G. Kovacs (1) , J.-R. Kramm (1) , Ekkehard Kührt (6) , M. Küppers (24) , M. Lazzarin (9) , Z.-Y. Lin (25) , J. J. Lopez Moreno (8) , F. Marzari (9) , G. Naletto (18, 26, 4) , X. Shi (1) , Nicholas Thomas (5) , C. Tubiana (1)

1 MPS - Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung
2 Department of Astronomy [College Park]
3 ARC - NASA Ames Research Center
4 CISAS - Centro di Ateneo di Studi e Attività Spaziali “Giuseppe Colombo”
5 Physikalisches Institut [Bern]
6 DLR Institut für Planetenforschung
7 LESIA - Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique
8 IAA - Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía
9 Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia "Galileo Galilei"
10 LAM - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille
11 CAB - Centro de Astrobiologia [Madrid]
12 ISSI - International Space Science Institute [Bern]
13 ESTEC - European Space Research and Technology Centre
14 Department of Physics and Astronomy [Uppsala]
15 CBK - Space Research Centre of Polish Academy of Sciences
16 PLANETO - LATMOS
17 OAPD - INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova
18 IFN - CNR Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies
19 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
20 Department of Industrial Engineering [Padova]
21 OAT - INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste
22 Institute of Space Science [Taiwan]
23 IGEP - Institut für Geophysik und Extraterrestrische Physik [Braunschweig]
24 Operations Department (ESAC)
25 IANCU - Institute of Astronomy [Taiwan]
26 DEI - Department of Information Engineering [Padova]

Deep Impact, EPOXI and Rosetta missions visited comets 9P/Tempel 1, 103P/Hartley 2 and 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko respectively. Each of these three missions was equipped with both multispectral imagers and infrared spectrometers. Bright blue features containing water ice were detected in each of these comet nuclei. We analysed multispectral properties of enriched water ice features observed via OSIRIS NAC on comet 67P in the wavelength range of 260 nm to 1000 nm and then compared with multispectral data of water ice deposits observed on comets 9P and 103P. We characterize the UV/VIS properties of water ice rich features observed on the nuclei of these three comets. When compared to the average surface of each comet, our analysis shows that the water ice deposits seen on comet 9P are similar to the clustered water ice rich features seen on comet 67P, while the water ice deposit seen on comet 103P is more akin to two large isolated water ice rich features seen on comet 67P. Our results indicate that the water ice deposit observed on comet 103P contains more water ice than the water ice rich features observed on comets 9P and 67P, proportionally to the average surface of each nucleus.

Domains: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics [astro-ph.EP]; Solar and Stellar Astrophysics [astro-ph.SR]

Nilda Oklay, Jessica M. Sunshine, Maurizio Pajola, Antoine Pommerol, Jean-Baptiste Vincent, et al.. Comparative study of water ice exposures on cometary nuclei using multispectral imaging data. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2016, 462 (Suppl. 1), pp.S394-S414. ⟨10.1093/mnras/stw2918⟩. ⟨insu-01397742⟩