A sounding rocket payload to obtain far ultraviolet spectral images of comet P/Halley was launched on 1986 Feb 24 and again on 1986 Mar 13. The second flight occurred 13 hr prior to the Giotto spacecraft flyby of the comet. The payload included an objective grating spectrograph, consisting of an f/1.5 microchannel plate intensified electrographic Schmidt camera pointed at a plane grating. The instrument field of view was 12 deg with a spatial resolution of 1 arcmin and a point source wavelength resolution of 0.1 nm. High quality images of the oxygen coma at 130.4 nm, the carbon coma at 156.1 nm and 165.7 nm, and the sulfur coma at 181.4 nm were obtained. The images were analyzed using a radial outflow model to derive production rates for these species.
Far Ultraviolet Objective Spectra of Comet P/Halley from Sounding Rockets
1986
6 pages
Report
No indication
English
Rocket ultraviolet observations of Comet Halley
NTRS | 1987
|NTRS | 1965
|GWLB - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek | 1959
|NTIS | 2024
|