Beatrice Mueller

NASA Planetary Mission Data Analysis

Archiving of ground-based data of NASA mission targets, comets 9P/Tempel 1 and 19P/Borrelly

We propose to archive our data for Tempel 1 and Borrelly into NASA's Planetary Data System, as part of the ground-based support observations of the Deep Impact, Stardust-NExT, and Deep Space 1 missions. The archival sets will include the raw images of the comets and standard stars, as well as the calibration frames (flats and biases) and the processed images of the comet and standard stars. Documentation about the telescopes, instruments, observing conditions, and image processing will also be provided. Furthermore, tables with conversions of the counts in the CCD images to fluxes will be provided for all photometrically calibratable data. This is a unique data set that can be used for multiple studies of the dust, gas, dynamics etc. Some of this work is done by us, but as these data are of such value and potential, they will be made available to the entire astronomical community to maximize the science return. 

The data set for comet Tempel 1 consists of broadband R and HB narrowband filter images observed for four nights each in February, March, May and June, for six nights in April, and for eight nights in July 2005 around the Deep Impact encounter. The data set for Borrelly consists of broadband R images for three nights in September 2001 bracketing the Deep Space 1 encounter. These Borrelly data complement earlier data taken in 2000 (Mueller and Samarasinha 2002) that have already been archived into the Planetary Data System. 


This archival proposal is relevant to the NASA Planetary Mission Data Analysis Program. Our data sets of Tempel 1 are homogeneous, extensive, comprehensive, and unique. The data set for Tempel 1 consists of over 200 pre-encounter images taken with the same telescope and instrument and is therefore a highly homogeneous data set. Over 100 images were taken during July around the encounter, again an extensive and homogeneous data set. 

Archiving the data sets for comet Tempel 1 is especially important as the comet is not well placed for ground-based observations for the six months before and the days around the upcoming Stardust-NExT encounter in February 2011. Our data might therefore be the only ground-based visible data that are readily available to compare the spacecraft images to.