Abstract Details

Name: Shashikiran Ganesh
Affiliation: Physical Research Laboratory
Conference ID: ASI2021_472
Title : Minor bodies and their composition
Authors and Co-Authors : S. Ganesh (PRL) et al.,
Abstract Type : Invited
Abstract Category : Sun and the Solar System
Abstract : Minor bodies are an important constituent of the solar system. As leftovers from the time of formation of the planetary system, they can provide key insight into the formation and further evolution of the system. At PRL, we have been involved in observations of the minor bodies of the solar system over several decades starting with polarimetric observations. We have, in recent times, added spectroscopy to the repertoire. Many comets and asteroids have been studied with spectrographs such as LISA (on the 1.2 m and 50 cm telescopes at Mount Abu) and the HFOSC and HESP (on the HCT). Recently we were also successful in obtaining images and spectra of the first interstellar comet 2I/Borisov using the Indian facilities. Results show that there is a similarity in the spectroscopic behaviour of this interstellar comet with that of the Solar system comets. The polarimetric database for comets has a large contribution from PRL's facilities. Taking advantage of these, we have recently constructed a dust model and simulated the polarisation phase curve for several comets. This simulation was done using PRL's Vikram-100 High-Performance Computing (HPC) facility. We shall present some of the results of our observations and the simulations in the talk.