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C.M. Lisse (JHU APL)
On July 4, 2005 NASA's discovery mission Deep Impact (hereafter DI) will send a 375 kg impactor into the nucleus of comet 9P/Tempel 1 at 10.2 km/s relative velocity in order to produce a crater that will reveal sub-surface layers of the nucleus. Any changes in the observed properties of the comet will be attributable to the removal of a section of evolved, insolated surface and the exposure of the relatively fresh sub-surface interior of the nucleus. The Deep Impact instrument payload includes two CCD cameras with broad-band filters covering the optical spectrum, allowing for sensitive measurement of dust in the comet's coma, and a number of narrow-band filters for studying the spatial distribution of several gas species. DI also carries the first 1-5 um spectrometer to flyby a comet since the VEGA mission to Halley in 1986. This 1-dimensional spectrograph will allow detection and mapping of molecular gas emission lines from the coma in unprecedented detail. Here we discuss the pre-encounter state of understanding of the 9P/Tempel 1 coma, and our initial results on the coma from the DI-comet encounter, including optical spectrophotometry, scanning spectra, and selected supporting 0.4' 35 um ground and space-based remote observations.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #3
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.