Rotational Properties of Comet 22P/Kopff
Abstract
Comet 22P/Kopff was discovered in 1906 (recovered 1916) and it was found that the orbit of the comet could not be explained fully by gravitational forces only. Several attempts to model these effects were carried out in the past. Jets on the surface of the nucleus are believed to cause the observed Nongravitational forces but all models suffer from a large number of assumptions on nucleus properties that are required to perform the theoretical calculations. The rotational period is particularly important as it is used to derive other characteristics as thermal properties, oblateness, and albedo. Lowry & Weissman (2003) reported a period of 12.30 +/- 0.08h. An extensive set of observations of comet 22P/Kopff has been obtained in an observational program of K. Meech that aimed to study the activity of comets as a function of heliocentric distance. >24 sets of observations have been performed between 1988 and 2012. Most data were taken with the UH 2.2m telescope, followed by Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory and Kitt Peak National Observatory. More than 400 frames on target have been obtained. Not all datasets are suitable for rotational analysis and cover enough time baseline to be used individually for period determination. Since most heliocentric distances are covered, there are data sets with no or little rotational information due to activity. The current work aims to analyze all available data in order to obtain the best rotational period possible. Preliminary results will be presented at the conference. This material is partly based upon work supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through the NASA Astrobiology Institute under Coop-erative Agreement No. NNA08DA77A issued through the Office of Space Science. References: Lowry, S. C., and Weissman, P. R.: CCD observations of distant comets from Palomar and Steward observatories, Icarus, Vol. 164, pp. 492-503, 2003.
- Publication:
-
AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts #44
- Pub Date:
- October 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012DPS....4431424R