Surface temperature of the nucleus of Comet 9P/Tempel 1

The Deep Impact (DI) spacecraft encountered Comet 9P/Tempel 1 on July 4th, 2005 and observed it with several instruments. In particular, we obtained infrared spectra of the nucleus with the HRI-IR spectrometer in the wavelength range of 1.0–4.9 μm. The data were taken before impact, with a maximum r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Icarus (New York, N.Y. 1962) N.Y. 1962), 2007-03, Vol.187 (1), p.16-25
Main Authors: Groussin, O., A'Hearn, M.F., Li, J.-Y., Thomas, P.C., Sunshine, J.M., Lisse, C.M., Meech, K.J., Farnham, T.L., Feaga, L.M., Delamere, W.A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Comet Tempel-1
Comets
nucleus
origin
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Summary:The Deep Impact (DI) spacecraft encountered Comet 9P/Tempel 1 on July 4th, 2005 and observed it with several instruments. In particular, we obtained infrared spectra of the nucleus with the HRI-IR spectrometer in the wavelength range of 1.0–4.9 μm. The data were taken before impact, with a maximum resolution of ∼120 m per pixel at the time of observation. From these spectra, we derived the first directly observed temperature map of a comet nucleus. The surface temperature varied from 272 ± 7 to 336 ± 7   K on the sunlit hemisphere, matching the surface topography and incidence angle. The derived thermal inertia is low, most probably
ISSN:0019-1035
1090-2643
DOI:10.1016/j.icarus.2006.08.030