Day 1753

Wednesday.

2009.00101

Cryogenic cometary sample return

Westphal, et al

Comets likely formed in the outer regions of the protosolar nebula where they incorporated and preserved primitive presolar materials, volatiles resident in the outer disk, and more refractory materials from throughout the disk. The return of a sample of volatiles (i.e., ices and entrained gases), along with other components of a cometary nucleus, will yield numerous major scientific opportunities. We are unaccustomed to thinking of ices through a mineralogical/petrological lens, but at cryogenic temperatures, ices can be regarded as mineral components of rocky material like any other. This is truly Terra Incognita, as a sample from a natural cryogenic (10s of K) environment is unprecedented in any setting; currently, we can only make educated guesses about the nature of these materials on a microscopic scale. Such samples will provide an unparalleled look at the primordial gases and ices present in the early solar nebula, enabling insights into the gas phase and gas-grain chemistry of the nebula. Understanding the nature of the ices in their microscopic, petrographic relationship to the refractory components of the cometary sample will allow for the study of those relationships and interactions and a study of evolutionary processes on small icy bodies. The previous 2013-2022 Planetary Decadal Survey included a study of a Flagship-class cryogenic comet nucleus sample return mission, given the scientific importance of such a mission. However, the mission was not recommended for flight in the last Decadal Survey, in part because of the immaturity of critical technologies. Now, a decade later, the scientific importance of the mission remains and relevant technological advances have been made in both cryo instrumentation for flight and laboratory applications. Such a mission should be undertaken in the next decade.

2009.00367

KiDS+VIKING-450: Consistency tests for cosmic shear tomography with a color-based split of source galaxies

Li, Kuijken, Hoekstra, Hildebrandt, Joachimi, Kannawadi

We perform an internal-consistency test of the KiDS+VIKING-450 (KV450) cosmic shear analysis with a colour-based split of source galaxies. Utilising the same measurements and calibrations for both subsamples, we inspect the characteristics of the shear measurements and the performance of the calibration pipelines. On the modelling side, we examine the observational nuisance parameters, specifically those for the redshift calibration and intrinsic alignments, using a Bayesian analysis with dedicated test parameters. We verify that the current nuisance parameters are sufficient for the KV450 data to capture residual systematics, with slight deviations seen in the second and the third redshift tomographic bins. Our test also showcases the degeneracy between the inferred amplitude of intrinsic alignments and the redshift uncertainties in low redshift tomographic bins. The test is rather insensitive to the background cosmology, and therefore can be implemented before any cosmological inference is made.