Observations of Comet 19P/Borrelly by the Miniature Integrated Camera and Spectrometer Aboard Deep Space 1

doi:10.1126/science.1069527

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1069527v1

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Published Online April 4, 2002
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1069527

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Submitted on January 3, 2002
Accepted on March 26, 2002

Observations of Comet 19P/Borrelly by the Miniature Integrated Camera and Spectrometer Aboard Deep Space 1

L. A. Soderblom ¹^*, T. L. Becker ¹, G. Bennett ¹, D. C. Boice ², D. T. Britt ³, R. H. Brown ⁴, B. J. Buratti ⁵, C. Isbell ¹, B. Giese ⁶, T. Hare ¹, M. D. Hicks ⁵, E. Howington-Kraus ¹, R. L. Kirk ¹, M. Lee ⁵, R. M. Nelson ⁵, J. Oberst ⁶, T. C. Owen ⁷, M. D. Rayman ⁵, B. R. Sandel ⁴, S. A. Stern ⁸, N. Thomas ⁹, R. V. Yelle ⁴

¹ United States Geological Survey, 2255 North Gemini Drive, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, USA.
² Southwest Research Institute, 6220 Culebra Road, San Antonio, TX 78238, USA.
³ Department of Geological Sciences, University of Tennessee, 306 Geological Sciences Building, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA.
⁴ Department of Planetary Science, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
⁵ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.
⁶ DLR Institute of Space Sensor Technology and Planetary Exploration, Rutherfordstrasse, 2D-12489 Berlin, Germany.
⁷ Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.
⁸ Department of Space Studies, Southwest Research Institute, 1050 Walnut Street No. 426, Boulder, CO 80302, USA.
⁹ Max-Planck-Institut für Aeronomie, Max-Planck-Strasse 2, 37191 Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lsoderblom{at}usgs.gov.

The first images of a Jupiter-family comet reveal Borrelly's nucleus to be extremely dark and elongate. The 8-km-long body is highly variegated on a scale of 200 m, exhibiting large albedo variations (0.01 to 0.03) and complex geologic relationships. Short-wavelength (1.3-2.6 µm) infrared spectra show a red-ward slope and a hot ( $<=$ 345K), dry (no trace of H₂O ice or hydrated minerals) surface consistent with ~10% or less of the surface actively sublimating. Borrelly's coma exhibits two types of dust features: fans and highly collimated jets. At encounter the near-nucleus coma was dominated by a prominent dust jet that resolved into at least 3 smaller jets emanating from a broad basin in the middle of the nucleus. Because the major dust jet remained fixed in orientation, it is evidently aligned near the nucleus' rotation axis.

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