SURFACE CHARACTERISTICS OF CERES FROM ALMA OBSERVATIONS

• Main Author: Yusiawati Basri, Hanny
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Astronomi
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/57230
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Ceres, discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi on 1 January 1801, is a dwarf planet and is located in the region Main Belt Asteroid at a distance of 2.77 au. Ceres was visited for the first time by the Dawn spacecraft in 2015, which successfully conducted various observations to reveal a variety unique features of Ceres, which are generally not found in other objects. These unique features include an icecovered surface, cryovolcanic mountains, widespread impact craters, bright spots on the surface, the possibility of an ocean below the surface, to the alleged existence of a transient atmosphere. To study Ceres further in the millimeter/submillimeter wavelength range, in this study data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations will be analyzed in the context of imaging, spectroscopy, and photometry. So far, there have been nearly 300 Ceres data from ALMA observations that are mostly performed for calibration. The selection of data taken from the ALMA archive is carried out by considering data that has a fairly high spatial and spectral resolution. The result obtained in this final project is a thermal map of Ceres related to emissions from the sub-surface, that needs to be analyzed by thermophysical modeling. Molecular spectrum searches have not shown any transient atmosphere on Ceres. Ceres photometry at this millimeter wavelength also gives an indication of the difference in brightness between the eastern hemisphere which is brighter than the western hemisphere of Ceres.