OSIRIS is the main imaging system on the ESA mission Rosetta. The programme started in 1994.
The system comprises two separate optical systems (a narrow angle camera, NAC, and a wide-angle camera, WAC), which are driven through a common electronics box. Several elements of the two cameras are duplicates of each other. For example, the filter wheels, the mechanical shutters, and the focal planes are identical.
The NAC has a pixel scale of around 18.6 urad/px with a point-spread function of around 1.2 pixels (FWHM). The resolution of the WAC is around five times lower. The NAC contains a series of moderately wide-band filters (typically 60 nm bandpass) designed to provide high-spatial resolution colours of the surface. The WAC contains a series of filters designed to isolate optical gas emissions with a set of continuum filters available to study the dust and its contamination of signal in the gas lines.
NAC Flight Model during integration
WAC Flight Model ready for integration.
The University of Padova and the Astronomical Observatory of Padova (INAF) contributed with the design and realization of the Wide Angle Camera (WAC), the shutters and the front covers.
Our group is currently working on several aspects of the data analysis including:
Geomorphology of the comet nucleus
Geological mapping of the nucleus
Layering analysis on the nucleus
Counting and analysis of the boulders on the nucleus surface
Photometry of dust grains
The Hardware Team
Six scientific institutes are represented in the OSIRIS consortium. Each institute assigned a lead scientist to represent them. The institutes and lead scientists at the start of the project were:
• Max-Planck-Institut fuer Aeronomie (MPAE), Germany (PI: H.U. Keller; replaced by H. Sierks)
• Laboratoire d'Astronomie Spatiale (LAS), France (P. Lamy; L. Jorda)
• University of Padova (UPD), Italy (C. Barbieri)
• Institute for Astrophysics, Granada (IAA), Spain (R. Rodrigo)
• Astronomical Observatory, Uppsala (AOU), Sweden (H. Rickman; B. Davidsson)
• ESTEC (SSD), ESA (K.P. Wenzel; D. Koschny)