Spectrophotometric properties of the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from the OSIRIS instrument onboard the ROSETTA spacecraft

TL;DR

This study analyzes the spectrophotometric properties of comet 67P's nucleus using OSIRIS data, revealing its phase function, spectral behavior, albedo variations, and regional differences, including the active Hapi region.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed spectrophotometric characterization of 67P's nucleus from OSIRIS imaging, including phase function, spectral slopes, and regional surface properties.

Findings

Strong opposition surge with G = -0.13

Red spectral behavior with potential SO2 ice absorption

Hapi region is the brightest, bluest, and most active surface

Abstract

The Rosetta mission of the European Space Agency has been orbiting the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) since August 2014 and is now in its escort phase. A large complement of scientific experiments designed to complete the most detailed study of a comet ever attempted are onboard Rosetta. We present results for the photometric and spectrophotometric properties of the nucleus of 67P derived from the OSIRIS imaging system, which consists of a Wide Angle Camera (WAC) and a Narrow Angle Camera (NAC). The disk-averaged phase function of the nucleus of 67P shows a strong opposition surge with a G parameter value of -0.13$\pm$0.01 in the HG system formalism and an absolute magnitude $H_v(1,1,0)$ = 15.74$\pm$0.02 mag. The integrated spectrophotometry in 20 filters covering the 250-1000 nm wavelength range shows a red spectral behavior, without clear absorption bands except for a potential absorption centered at $\sim$ 290 nm that is possibly due to SO$_2$ ice. The nucleus shows strong phase reddening, with disk-averaged spectral slopes increasing from 11\%/(100 nm) to 16\%/(100 nm) in the 1.3$^{\circ}$--54$^{\circ}$ phase angle range. The geometric albedo of the comet is 6.5$\pm$0.2\% at 649 nm, with local variations of up to $\sim$ 16\% in the Hapi region. From the disk-resolved images we computed the spectral slope together with local spectrophotometry and identified three distinct groups of regions (blue, moderately red, and red). The Hapi region is the brightest, the bluest in term of spectral slope, and the most active surface on the comet. Local spectrophotometry shows an enhancement of the flux in the 700-750 nm that is associated with coma emissions.