{"id":6082,"date":"2014-10-21T09:26:01","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T17:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/casgc.ucsd.edu\/?p=6082"},"modified":"2014-10-21T09:26:01","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T17:26:01","slug":"mars-orbiter-shows-comet-nucleus-is-small","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casgc.ucsd.edu\/?p=6082","title":{"rendered":"Mars Orbiter Shows Comet Nucleus is Small"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA&#8217;s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured views of comet C\/2013 A1 Siding Spring while that visitor sped past Mars on Sunday (Oct. 19), yielding information about its nucleus.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/casgc.ucsd.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/comet.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-6083\" title=\"comet\" src=\"http:\/\/casgc.ucsd.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/comet-300x196.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"196\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more-->The images are the highest-resolution views ever acquired of a comet coming from the Oort Cloud at the fringes of the solar system.\u00a0 Other spacecraft have approached and studied comets with shorter orbits. This comet&#8217;s flyby of Mars provided spacecraft at the Red Planet an opportunity to investigate from close range.<\/p>\n<p>Images of comet Siding Spring from HiRISE are online at:<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jpl.nasa.gov\/spaceimages\/details.php?id=PIA18618\">http:\/\/www.jpl.nasa.gov\/spaceimages\/details.php?id=PIA18618<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The highest-resolution of images of the comet&#8217;s nucleus, taken from a distance of about 86,000 miles (138,000 kilometers), have a scale of about 150 yards (138 meters) per pixel. Telescopic observers had modeled the size of the nucleus as about half a mile, or one kilometer wide.\u00a0 However, the best HiRISE images show only two to three pixels across the brightest feature, probably the nucleus, suggesting a size smaller than half that estimate.<\/p>\n<p>Article from NASA.gov<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA&#8217;s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured views of comet C\/2013 A1 Siding Spring while that visitor sped past Mars on Sunday (Oct. 19), yielding information about its nucleus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casgc.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casgc.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casgc.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casgc.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casgc.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casgc.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casgc.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casgc.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casgc.ucsd.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}