EPOXI

Two intriguing investigations -- One flight-proven spacecraft

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103P on 2010-10-01

Image of 103P/Hartley taken 2010.10.01 by DI S/C and marked with directional pointers.

Caption: This EPOXI mission image of comet 103P/Hartley 2 was taken 34 days from Encounter (E-34d) using the Medium Resolution Instrument (MRI) and a clear filter. Science Team member Dr. Dennis Wellnitz combined three successive one-minute exposures to make this single image. The mid-exposure time was 2010/10/01 16:22:51 UTC. The comet was 1.12 AU from the Sun and 0.23 AU (35 million km) from the spacecraft.

Since image release #4, two things have changed:
+ The spacecraft instruments are now staring continuously at comet Hartley 2 for 16 hours a day and are taking images every few minutes for 16 hours at a time; however, there is only limited storage space on the spacecraft, so the images are now only using a subframe of 256x256 pixels instead of 512x512 pixels for image releases 1-4.
+ The science team has decided to present the images such that the Sun is always off to the right of the comet. This puts celestial North approximately towards the top of the frame, but later on, there will be a spacecraft flip and we will keep the Sun to the right and celestial North will be approximately down.

Technical Details

Image Parameter	Details
Spacecraft:	Deep Impact Flyby
Instrument:	Medium Resolution Instrument (MRI)
Mid-exposure Date/Time (UTC):	2010/10/01 16:22:51
Filter:	Clear
Exposure:	3 x 60 sec
Pointing:	RA 20^h 53' 16" Dec +37° 13' 44"
Field of View:	approximately 89,000 km at the comet
Solar Elongation:	113°
Solar Phase Angle:	56°
Sun-Comet distance (r):	1.1208 AU (168 million km)
DIF-Comet distance:	0.2327 AU (35 million km)

Table 1: Data about image.

Additional Images:

Image of 103P/Hartley taken 2010.09.25 by DI S/C.

Click for full size image.
This is the same image as above, but without the pointers.

Negative image of 103P/Hartley taken 2010.09.25 by DI S/C.

Click for full size image.
Negative of the same image which makes it a little easier to see the faint coma around the comet.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD

103P spectra, lightcurves...

2010-10-27 CN coma
2010-10-27 jets, lightcurve
2010-10-21 lightcurve
2010-10-16 spectrum

103P on...

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