Rosetta flyby of Asteroid Lutetia |
Rosetta flyby of Asteroid Lutetia |
Dec 26 2009, 07:35 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1729 Joined: 3-August 06 From: 43° 35' 53" N 1° 26' 35" E Member No.: 1004 |
time to start a thread on one of the most interesting UMSF events of 2010...
Published thu on arXiv Ultraviolet and visible photometry of asteroid (21) Lutetia using the Hubble Space Telescope |
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Dec 29 2009, 10:05 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1729 Joined: 3-August 06 From: 43° 35' 53" N 1° 26' 35" E Member No.: 1004 |
A quick recap of facts about Lutetia from "Robotic Exploration of the Solar System - Part 3":
QUOTE Almost 100 km in size, Lutetia was discovered on 15 November 1852 by Hermann M.S. Goldschmidt in Paris and dedicated to the town itself, which was known to the Romans as Lutetia Parisiorum (Lutetia of the Parisii tribe). QUOTE On penetrating the asteroid belt for the second time, the vehicle will pass Lutetia on 10 July 2010 at a range of about 3,055 km, traveling at a relative speed of 15 km/s. The data from the IRAS infrared astronomy satellite enabled the average diameter of this object to be roughly estimated during the 1980s at 95.5 km, but a number of light curves obtained since, most recently by the Hubble Space Telescope, have enabled astronomers to determine that it is asymmetric and about 132 x 101 x 93 km across, and to rotate in a little over 8 hours. Observations at a range of ‘look angles’ even revealed variations which hinted at the presence of one or more large craters in the northern hemisphere. Lutetia is therefore one of the best-characterized asteroids to receive a spacecraft inspection. However, despite a large number of spectroscopic studies, its taxonomic class was debated. For a long time it was listed as an M-class object that spectrally resembled some iron-rich meteorites. As yet, no such body has been visited. But this classification was not confirmed by infrared observations by the European Southern Observatory, a telescope in Hawaii and the Spitzer Space Telescope, nor by ultraviolet observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. Hence Lutetia is now regarded as an anomalous C-class object, reflecting more light than other members of the class, possibly implying that its surface is ‘unweathered’. In fact, Lutetia appears similar to some metal-rich carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. Rosetta made observations of Lutetia in January 2007, just before the Mars flyby, in order to assist in characterizing its light curve, rotation period and spin axis. |
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