Commission 51: Bioastronomy

published_or_final_versio

Asteroid Compositions: some evidence from polarimetry

Although it cannot provide direct and unambiguous information on the mineralogical composition of an asteroid surface, polarimetry is a very useful tool to get an improved understanding of parameters which are intimately related to surface composition and regolith structure. In recent times there has been a revival in the field of asteroid polarimetry, on the theoretical side, in relation to experimental simulations, and due to the activity of some teams who are engaged in extensive observational campaigns. Some new discoveries of objects exhibiting unprecedented polarimetric properties have been done. The above subjects are briefly reviewed.Fil: Cellino, A.. Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica; ItaliaFil: Di Martino, M.. Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica; ItaliaFil: Levasseur Regourd, A. C.. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Francia. Universidad Pierre y Marie Curie; FranciaFil: Belskaya, I. N.. Astronomical Institute of Kharkiv National University; UcraniaFil: Bendjoya, Ph.. Universite Nice; FranciaFil: Gil Hutton, Ricardo Alfredo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Juan. Complejo Astronómico "El Leoncito". Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Complejo Astronómico "El Leoncito". Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Complejo Astronómico "El Leoncito". Universidad Nacional de San Juan. Complejo Astronómico "El Leoncito"; Argentin

Scattering of light by a large, densely packed agglomerate of small silica spheres

We model the measured phase function and degree of linear polarization of a macroscopic agglomerate made of micrometer-scale silica spheres using the methodology of multiple scattering. In the laboratory work, the agglomerate is produced ballistically, characterized by scanning electron microscopy, and measured with the PROGRA(2) instrument to obtain the light scattering properties. The model phase function and degree of polarization are in satisfactory agreement with the experimental data. To our best knowledge, this is the first time the degree of linear polarization has been modeled well for a large, densely packed agglomerate composed of small particles with known sizes and shapes. The study emphasizes the relevance of the degree of linear polarization and gives insights into the effects of particle aggregation on the scattering characteristics. (C) 2020 Optical Society of AmericaPeer reviewe

Participation of women scientists in ESA solar system missions: A historical trend

We analyzed the participation of women scientists in 10 ESA (European Space Agency) Solar System missions over a period of 38 years. Being part of a spacecraft mission science team can be considered a proxy to measure the "success"in the field. Participation of women in PI (Principal Investigators) teams varied between 4% and 25 %, with several missions with no women as PI. The percentage of female scientists as Co-I (Co-Investigators) is always less than 16 %. This number is lower than the percentage of women in the International Astronomical Union from all ESA's Member State (24 %), which can give us an indication of the percentage of women in the field. We encountered many difficulties to gather the data for this study. The list of team members were not always easily accessible. An additional difficulty was to determine the percentage of female scientists in planetary science in Europe. We would like to encourage the planetary community as a whole, as well as international organizations, universities and societies to continuously gather statistics over many years. Detailed statistics are only the first step to closely monitor the development of achievement gaps and initiate measures to tackle potential causes of inequity, leading to gender inequalities in STEM careers

ESA F-Class Comet Interceptor: Trajectory design to intercept a yet-to-be-discovered comet

Comet Interceptor (Comet-I) was selected in June 2019 as the first ESA F-Class mission. In 2029+, Comet-I will hitch a ride to a Sun-Earth L2 quasi-halo orbit, as a co-passenger of ESA's M4 ARIEL mission. It will then remain idle at the L2 point until the right departure conditions are met to intercept a yet-to-be-discovered long period comet (or interstellar body). The fact that Comet-I target is thus unidentified becomes a key aspect of the trajectory and mission design. The paper first analyses the long period comet population and concludes that 2 to 3 feasible targets a year should be expected. Yet, Comet-I will only be able to access some of these, depending mostly on the angular distance between the Earth and the closest nodal point to the Earth's orbit radius. A preliminary analysis of the transfer trajectories has been performed to assess the trade-off between the accessible region and the transfer time for a given spacecraft design, including a fully chemical, a fully electric and a hybrid propulsion system. The different Earth escape options also play a paramount role to enhance Comet-I capability to reach possible long period comet targets. Particularly, Earth-leading intercept configurations have the potential to benefit the most from lunar swing-by departures. Finally, a preliminary Monte Carlo analysis shows that Comet-I has a 95–99% likelihood of successfully visit a pristine newly-discovered long period comet in less than 6 years of mission timespan

Theoretical Limits on Extrasolar Terrestrial Planet Detection with Coronagraphs

Many high contrast coronagraph designs have recently been proposed. In this paper, their suitability for direct imaging of extrasolar terrestrial planets is reviewed. We also develop a linear-algebra based model of coronagraphy that can both explain the behavior of existing coronagraphs and quantify the coronagraphic performance limit imposed by fundamental physics. We find that the maximum theoretical throughput of a coronagraph is equal to one minus the non-aberrated non-coronagraphic PSF of the telescope. We describe how a coronagraph reaching this fundamental limit may be designed, and how much improvement over the best existing coronagraph design is still possible. Both the analytical model and numerical simulations of existing designs also show that this theoretical limit rapidly degrades as the source size is increased: the ``highest performance'' coronagraphs, those with the highest throughput and smallest Inner Working Angle (IWA), are the most sensitive to stellar angular diameter. This unfortunately rules out the possibility of using a small IWA (lambda/d) coronagraph for a terrestrial planet imaging mission. Finally, a detailed numerical simulation which accurately accounts for stellar angular size, zodiacal and exozodiacal light is used to quantify the efficiency of coronagraph designs for direct imaging of extrasolar terrestrial planets in a possible real observing program. We find that in the photon noise limited regime, a 4m telescope with a theoretically optimal coronagraph is able to detect Earth-like planets around 50 stars with 1hr exposure time per target (assuming 25% throughput and exozodi levels similar to our solar system). We also show that at least 2 existing coronagraph design can approach this level of performance in the ideal monochromatic case considered in this study.Comment: Accepted for publication to ApJ Sup

A porosity gradient in 67P/C-G nucleus suggested from CONSERT and SESAME-PP results: an interpretation based on new laboratory permittivity measurements of porous icy analogues

The Rosetta spacecraft made a rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) in 2014 August, soon after the Philae module landed on the small lobe of the nucleus on 2014 November 12. The CONSERT instrument, onboard Rosetta and Philae, sounded the upper part of the interior of 67P with radiowaves at 90 MHz and determined an average of the real part of the permittivity (hereafter ) equal to about 1.27. The SESAME-PP instrument, onboard Philae, sounded the near-surface of the small lobe in the 400–800 Hz range and determined a lower limit of equal to 2.45. We use a semi-empirical formula obtained from measurements of performed in the laboratory at 243 K on water ice and ice-basaltic dust mixtures, with a controlled porosity in the 31–91 per cent range and a dust-to-ice volumetric ratio in the 0.1– 2.8 range, to interpret the results of the two instruments, taking into account the temperature and frequency dependences. A graphical method is proposed to derive ranges of porosity and dust-mass fraction from a value of derived from observations. The non-dispersive behaviour of below 175 K, allows us to compare the values of obtained by CONSERT and SESAME-PP. We show that the porosity of the small lobe of 67P increases with depth. Based on new measurements of analogues of complex extraterrestrial organic matter, the so-called tholins, we also suggest that, for the dust component in the cometary material, the presence of silicates has more effect on than organic materials

The First Detections of the Extragalactic Background Light at 3000, 5500, and 8000A (II): Measurement of Foreground Zodiacal Light

We present a measurement of the absolute surface brightness of the zodiacal light (3900-5100A) toward a fixed extragalactic target at high ecliptic latitude based on moderate resolution (~1.3A per pixel) spectrophotometry obtained with the du Pont 2.5m telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. This measurement and contemporaneous Hubble Space Telescope data from WFPC2 and FOS comprise a coordinated program to measure the mean flux of the diffuse extragalactic background light (EBL). The zodiacal light at optical wavelengths results from scattering by interplanetary dust, so that the zodiacal light flux toward any extragalactic target varies seasonally with the position of the Earth. This measurement of zodiacal light is therefore relevant to the specific observations (date and target field) under discussion. To obtain this result, we have developed a technique that uses the strength of the zodiacal Fraunhofer lines to identify the absolute flux of the zodiacal light in the multiple-component night sky spectrum. Statistical uncertainties in the result are 0.6% (1 sigma). However, the dominant source of uncertainty is systematic errors, which we estimate to be 1.1% (1 sigma). We discuss the contributions included in this estimate explicitly. The systematic errors in this result contribute 25% in quadrature to the final error in our coordinated EBL measurement, which is presented in the first paper of this series.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 22 pages using emulateapj.sty, version with higher resolution figures available at http://www.astro.lsa.umich.edu/~rab/publications.html or at http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Sep01/Bernstein2/frames.htm