IAU Colloquium 168
Cometary Nuclei in Space and Time

Nanjing, China
May 18-22, 1998

Electronically-submitted Abstracts of Participants


Survey of the Physical Properties of Comet Nuclei
Y.R.Fernández(1), M.F.A'Hearn(1), C.M.Lisse(1), W.F.Hoffmann(2), A.Dayal(3), L.K.Deutsch(4), G.G.Fazio(5), J.L.Hora(5), H.U.Käufl(6), and M.J.Ressler(3)
(1) Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland (2) Department of Astronomy, University of Arizona (3) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (4) Department of Astronomy, Boston University (5) Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (6) European Southern Observatory

We report progress on our project to survey the physical properties (e.g., radius, albedo, thermal behavior, rotation period) of many comet nuclei via simultaneous or near-simultaneous imaging in the mid-infrared and the optical. Our long-term goal is to build up a statistically-valid sample of the ensemble thermophysical properties of the nuclei. We have so far observed comets Hyakutake (C/1996 B2), Hale-Bopp (C/1995 O1), 2P/Encke, 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, 81P/Wild 2, and Utsunomiya (C/1997 T1), and report the results obtained so far. We have developed a coma-fitting technique that can be used to separate the comatic and nuclear flux components from an image, thereby allowing us to determine the properties of many more comet nuclei than would otherwise be possible.



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Created 28 Apr 1998. yfp.