Abstract
The final Deep Space 1 (DS1) mission target, comet 19P/Borrelly, was observed from July 28—August 1, 2000 at the CTIO-1.5 m telescope in the R filter. The observed lightcurve has a large peak to peak variation between 0.84 mag and 1.0 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 of 25.02 ± 0.5 hr quoted by Lamy et al. (1998) using only 6 points of HST data and is also consistent with HST data taken around the DS1 encounter time by Weaver et al. (2002). Using the mean magnitude R = 20.8 mag and assuming a 4% albedo, we derive an effective nuclear radius of 2.6 km. The large lightcurve amplitude translates to a long to intermediate axial ratio a/b ≥ 2.2, in excellent agreement with the HST result of a/b ≥ 2.4 (Lamy et al., 1998) and with DS1 images (Soderblom et al., 2002).
based on observations taken at CTIO.
The National Optical Astronomy Observatory is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA) under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.
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Mueller, B.E.A., Samarasinha, N.H. (2002). Visible Lightcurve Observations of Comet 19P/Borrelly. In: Boehnhardt, H., Combi, M., Kidger, M.R., Schulz, R. (eds) Cometary Science after Hale-Bopp. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1088-6_47
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1088-6_47
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