Ejecta Evolution Following a Planned Impact into an Asteroid: The First Five Weeks
Abstract
The impact of the DART spacecraft into Dimorphos, moon of the asteroid Didymos, changed Dimorphos' orbit substantially, largely from the ejection of material. We present results from twelve Earth-based facilities involved in a world-wide campaign to monitor the brightness and morphology of the ejecta in the first 35 days after impact. After an initial brightening of ~1.4 magnitudes, we find consistent dimming rates of 0.11-0.12 magnitudes/day in the first week, and 0.08-0.09 magnitudes/day over the entire study period. The system returned to its pre-impact brightness 24.3-25.3 days after impact through the primary ejecta tail remained. The dimming paused briefly eight days after impact, near in time to the appearance of the second tail. This was likely due to a secondary release of material after re-impact of a boulder released in the initial impact, through movement of the primary ejecta through the aperture likely played a role.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2310.12089,
title = {Ejecta Evolution Following a Planned Impact into an Asteroid: The First Five Weeks},
author = {Theodore Kareta and Cristina Thomas and Jian-Yang Li and Matthew M. Knight and Nicholas Moskovitz and Agata Rozek and Michele T. Bannister and Simone Ieva and Colin Snodgrass and Petr Pravec and Eileen V. Ryan and William H. Ryan and Eugene G. Fahnestock and Andrew S. Rivkin and Nancy Chabot and Alan Fitzsimmons and David Osip and Tim Lister and Gal Sarid and Masatoshi Hirabayashi and Tony Farnham and Gonzalo Tancredi and Patrick Michel and Richard Wainscoat and Rob Weryk and Bonnie Burrati and Jana Pittichova and Ryan Ridden-Harper and Nicole J. Tan and Paul Tristram and Tyler Brown and Mariangela Bonavita and Martin Burgdorf and Elahe Khalouei and Penelope Longa and Markus Rabus and Sedighe Sajadian and Uffe Graae Jorgensen and Martin Dominik and Jean-Baptiste Kikwaya and Elena Mazzotta Epifani and Elisabetta Dotto and J. D. Prasanna Deshapriya and Pedro H. Hasselmann and Massimo Dall'Ora and Lyu Abe and Tristan Guillot and Djamel Mekarnia and Abdelkrim Agabi and Philippe Bendjoya and Olga Suarez and Amaury Triaud and Thomas Gasparetto and Maximillian N. Gunther and Michael Kueppers and Bruno Merin and Joseph Chatelain and Edward Gomez and Helen Usher and Cai Stoddard-Jones and Matthew Bartnik and Michael Bellaver and Brenna Chetan and Emma Dugan and Tori Fallon and Jeremy Fedewa and Caitlyn Gerhard and Seth A. Jacobson and Shane Painter and David-Michael Peterson and Joseph E. Rodriguez and Cody Smith and Kirill V. Sokolovsky and Hannah Sullivan and Kate Townley and Sarah Watson and Levi Webb and Josep M. Trigo-Rodrıguez and Josep M. Llenas and Ignacio Perez-Garcıa and A. J. Castro-Tirado and Jean-Baptiste Vincent and Alessandra Migliorini and Monica Lazzarin and Fiorangela La Forgia and Fabio Ferrari and Tom Polakis and Brian Skiff},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.12089},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
16 pages, 5 Figures, accepted in the Astrophysical Journal Letters (ApJL) on October 16, 2023