BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Rosetta's mission is coming to an end

Comet C-G made it to perihelion yesterday, along with Rosetta, of course. Perihelion is the nearest point to the Sun in its orbit.

Here is an animation of the images of an eruption that occurred just before perihelion.

Activity from Comet 67P/C-G is at its peak now that it has passed perihelion (closest distance to the Sun). Fast jets of dust and gas, plus rocks and boulders are flying out from the comet. All of these could be a danger to Rosetta. Here is a video called Rosetta's Moment in the Sun. It shows some of the recent cometary activity, and how ESOC (the operations center) in Darmstadt, Germany is working to keep Rosetta safe.

The European Space Agency (ESA) chose Philae's landing site on Comet C-G just a year ago. They've released a little movie to mark the anniversary. A set of seven images taken by Philae “have been interpolated in time to create a movie that shows Philae's descent between 67 metres and just 9 metres above the surface in real time, taking just under 1 minute.” No more after that, as by the time another 10 seconds had elapsed, Philae had bounced off.

Here is Philae's descent: The director's cut.

Credits:
Original descent sequence images: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/ROLIS/DLR, Stefano Mottola
Sequence interpolation and editing: Jakub Knapik, Platige Image
Music: “Saline” (instrumental version), from “Experiments in Mass Appeal”, Frost*/Jem Godfrey
Overall movie editing: Sarah Poletti and Marc Thiebaut (ATG/medialab for ESA)

On Wednesday (September 23), Rosetta will begin a three-week excursion that takes her as far as 1500 km from the nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This is much farther than she has been since arriving at the comet in August of last year. The idea is to study the comet's coma while the activity is still high.

The coma is an envelope of gas and dust that surrounds the nucleus. It starts forming when the comet gets close enough to the Sun so there's enough heat for water to sublimate, i.e., change from ice directly to vapor, without melting. (You may have seen frozen carbon dioxide – also known as dry ice – do this.)

Here's a good diagram of a comet if you're interested.

Hi Mona, that's a pretty awesome picture!!

Comet C-G is a funny shape. Who'd have expected a comet nucleus to look like a rubber duck! But was the “neck” created by erosion, or was the comet the result of two comets that collided to form the double lobe? This has been something of a mystery since Rosetta first imaged the odd shape. But Rosetta scientists have now studied studied high-res images, and from that examination have shown that there was a low-speed collision between two separate comets. Interesting.

The Royal Observatory made a short "claymation" video of ESA's Rosetta Mission. Worth a look and suitable for children.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a new cartoon. It's the latest episode in the series #‎LivingWithAComet which follows the Rosetta mission. This one is about what Rosetta learned in the first year studying Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and what happens when Philae wakes up from hibernation.

It's informative and quite cute, so it's a pleasant way of learning about what's been going on. It's just under 5 minutes long.

Comet C-G passed perihelion (nearest point to the Sun) in August of this year after Rosetta had been in orbit around it for a year. And several days ago it was the first anniversary of Philae's multiple landings on the comet.

So it's high time I changed the title of this thread "Rosetta and Comet C-G head for the Sun" to "head away from the Sun". Rosetta is scheduled to follow the comet until December of next year.

Rosetta Mission's tribute to David Bowie (January 8, 1947 - January 10, 2016)

RIP David Bowie, fellow space traveller