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C.M. Lisse (JHU-APL), D.J. Christian (Queens University, Belfast), K. Dennerl (MPE), S.J. Wolk (CXC, Harvard-SAO), D. Bodewits (KVI atomic physics), M.R. Combi (U.; Michigan), R. Hoekstra (KVI atomic physics), T. Makinen (Finnish Meteorological Institute), P.H. Schultz (Brown University), H.A. Weaver (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 the x-ray, the DI experiment allows for a controlled test of the charge exchange (CXE) emission mechanism that drives cometary x-ray emission (Lisse et al. 2001, Kharchenko and Dalgarno 2001, Krasnopolsky et al.2002). Previous ROSAT and Chandra observations studied cometary x-ray emission as the solar wind changed but the cometary emission remained constant. Here, at a precise time, a fresh amount of neutral material will be injected into a finite volume of the extended atmosphere, or coma, of the comet. This new material will directly increase the emission measure for the comet, passing from the collisionally thick to the collisionally thin regions of emission over the course of days. The DI experiment also allows for a direct search for prompt x-rays created by hyper-velocity impact processes, such as was seen by ROSAT during the impact of the K-fragment of comet D/Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter (Waite et al. 1995). We report here on the first results of of the Chandra observations of the Deep Impact encounter.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #3
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.