Physics of the Solar System

Physical modeling of gas and dust ejection from comet nuclei

Rosetta Mission: Marco Fulle is Interdisciplinary Scientist of this ESA mission to short period comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko; an orbiter will follow the nucleus of the comet from 4 AU down to perihelion and a lander will be delivered to the nucleus surface to sample pristine comet material. Marco is also Co-I of the experiments GIADA (in-situ measurement of dust flux impacting the orbiter) and OSIRIS (wide and small field cameras).

Zodiacal Light Emission below 1 THz

The thermal Zodiacal Light Emission (ZLE) is seen as a large scale, Far-IR foreground in CMB missions. This project aims at (1) detecting the ZLE below 1 THz with Planck mission data, improving COBE/FIRAS determinations; (2) assessing the total amount of Interplanetary Dust within the Solar System; (3) searching for the “cold dust component” so far undetected. Participants: M. Maris, C. Burigana, A. Gruppuso (INAF-IASFBO), K.Ganga, A. Fraisse (Univ. Paris 3).