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[43.02] Palomar AO observations during the Deep Impact encounter.

J. M. Bauer (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), B. Bhattacharya (California Institute of Technology), P. R. Weissman, M. Troy (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), R. Dekany (California Institute of Technology), B. J. Buratti (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

As part of a global effort by ground-based observatories to monitor the Deep Impact encounter with comet 9P/Tempel 1, our observing team at Palomar and Table Mountain (TMO) will observe the comet from July 3rd through July 7th (UT). Along with optical observations from TMO, we will observe the comet from the Palomar 200-inch telescope using the PALAO system in adaptive and passive optics mode at near-infrared wavelengths. We will present preliminary results from our encounter observations and examine the ambient state of the comet from our monitoring campaign prior to the encounter. Our data from 05June01 and 05June15 have already yielded preliminary R-band log(Af\rho) [cm] values near 2.3 for Tempel 1, suggesting less activity than some previous perihelion approaches.

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #3
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.