no evidence of nucleus in spectrum

Forums Comets Spectrum of Comet 46P/Wirtanen no evidence of nucleus in spectrum

#580391
Robin Leadbeater
Participant

Thanks Nick,

Just to finally put this one to bed, I checked the reflectance spectrum in a 3 arcsec window at the centre where the nucleus would be if it were detectable and compared it with  the region between 5-10 arcsec from the centre where the reflectance component is still strong but outside the nucleus. They both show the same trend of decreasing reflectance towards the blue so there is no evidence of the nucleus in the spectrum. I am a bit surprised about the dust reflectance spectrum though. I had expected perhaps the opposite trend with enhanced scattering in the blue.

Cheers

Robin