Visible Lightcurve Observations of Comet 19p/Borrelly |
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| Authors: | Mueller Béatrice E A Samarasinha Nalin H |
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| Institution: | (1) National Optical Astronomy Observatory, USA |
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| Abstract: | The final Deep Space 1 (DS1) mission target, comet 19P/Borrelly, was observedfrom July 28–August 1, 2000 at the CTIO-1.5 m
telescope in the R filter. Theobserved lightcurve has a large peak to peak variation between 0.84 mag and1.0 mag. A period
of 26.0 ± 1 hr (assuming a double-peaked lightcurve)was found using all five nights. This is in good agreement with the period
of25.02 ± 0.5 hr quoted by Lamy et al. (1998) using only 6 points ofHST data and is also consistent with HST data taken around
the DS1 encountertime by Weaver et al. (2002).Using the mean magnitude R = 20.8 mag and assuming a 4% albedo, we derivean
effective nuclear radius of 2.6 km. The large lightcurve amplitude translates toa long to intermediate axial ratio a/b ≥ 2.2,
in excellent agreement with theHST result of a/b ≥ 2.4 (Lamy et al., 1998) and with DS1 images (Soderblom et al., 2002). |
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| Keywords: | 19P/Borrelly comets photometry rotation |
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