Analysis of a particle in the surroundings of 67P using ImageJ
- 1European Space Agency, ESA, Science operations SCI-OO, Villanueva de la cañada, Spain
- 2Max Plank institute for solar system research Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 3, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
Comet 67P/C-G is a dusty object. As it neared its closest approach to the Sun in late July and August 2015, instruments on Rosetta recorded a huge amount of dust enshrouding the comet. This is tied to the comet’s proximity to our parent star, its heat causing the comet’s nucleus to release gases into space, lifting the dust along [10]. This disturbed, ejected material forms the ‘coma’, the gaseous envelope encasing the comet’s nucleus, and can create a beautiful and distinctive tail.
A single image from Rosetta’s OSIRIS instrument can contain hundreds of dust particles and grains surrounding the 4 km wide comet nucleus. The study of the dust behaviour is vital for understanding the global evolution of the comet and has direct consecuences in the research of the origins of the solar system. [1]
A simple image of the OSIRIS instrument can contain hundreds of dust and grain particles around a 4km sphere around the core. The images above show the level of complexity when processing an image. Partly, most image sequences are processed manually [5]
There is no universal method for calculating dust trajectories in comets [7]. To date, studies have been carried out on:
- Trajectories close to the surface of the comet [2]
- Calculation of trajectories through parallax between two cameras on board Rosetta [13], [15], [16]
- Orbital determination for long periods of time [11]
To determine dust trajectories, neither of these methods would work individually, but a combination of them could be effective. Using the satellite's displacement as a parallax source the position and velocity could be determined if the particle remains long enough in the camera's field of view.
The biggest drawback is the large number of false positives (stars, cosmic rays, etc ...) that make real detections difficult.
We will present a method of calculating the trajectories with ImageJ [7] and SPICE [9]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] Fulle et al 2016 [2] Agarwal et al 2016 [3] Guttler et al 2016 [4] El Maary et al 2017 [5] Guttler et al 2017 [6] Timenez et 2017 [7] Chenuard N et al 2014. [8] Bertini et al 2015 [9] DOI: 10.5270/esa-tyidsbu [10] Blum et al 2015 [11] Davidsson et al 2016 [12] Bertini et al 2017 [13] Drolshagen & Ott et al 2017 [14] Davidsson et al 2015 [15] Drolshagen et al 2017 [16] Ott et al 2017 [17] Ott (IMC 2016) [18] Pfeifer et al 2022
How to cite: Marín-Yaseli de la Parra, J., Kueppers, M., Roger, J., and Osiris Team, A. T.: Analysis of a particle in the surroundings of 67P using ImageJ, Europlanet Science Congress 2022, Granada, Spain, 18–23 Sep 2022, EPSC2022-789, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2022-789, 2022.
