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Back-tracing of water ions at comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

This paper examines the neutral coma of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko by using measurements of charged particles (water ions) and tracing them back to their place of ionisation. The measurements were taken from Rosetta’s Ion Composition Analyser. The simulations made use of an existing program which traces particles forward, which was changed to trace particles backwards, with new conditions for terminating the simulation. Two types of simulations were made. The first type is referred to as ”one-day simulations”. In these, simulations are made using data from a single occasion, with nine occasions studied per selected day. The days were selected so that the spacecraft was in different positions in relation to the comet. The second is referred to as the ”full-hemisphere” simulation. In this simulation, data from all usable days are used to produce an image of the hemisphere facing the Sun. The full-hemisphere simulation suffers from lack of simultaneous measurements, and indeed it is impossible to obtain in-situ measurements at all positions at once. Both simulations could be improved using more precise models, which could not be done within the allotted time of this work.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:ltu-67050
Date January 2017
CreatorsHåkansson, Marcus
PublisherLuleå tekniska universitet, Rymdteknik
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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