Abstract of the proposal for the experiment RV002 |
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The recently discovered comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) is the second interstellar visitor to the Solar System after ‘Oumuamua, and the first confirmed extrasolar comet observable at few-AU distances. We propose to conduct 20-cm phase-referenced VLBI observations of a bright VLBI source (0.3 Jy) that will be fortuitously occulted by the comet’s coma on 19-Sept-2019 between 8h and 12h UT. These observations will enable a measurement of the ion density in the coma using well established techniques that have previously been only applied to solar system comets. This will allow for the first comparative study of plasma production between (via outgassing) solar system comets and an extra-solar visitor. |