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Here is a photo of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, known familiarly as Comet C-G.

It was taken by Rosetta's navigation camera on May 20 at a distance of just over 100 miles away. Rosetta has been closer than that to the comet, but the really interesting thing about this picture is that we can see that C-G is getting more active. The activity will intensify as it gets ever closer to the Sun. The closest approach will be in August.




Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 07/07/16 01:31 AM.
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Alice is a NASA spectrograph on board Rosetta. The Alice measurements are showing that the water and carbon dioxide in the comet's coma (atmosphere) come from plumes erupting from the surface. They're produced by a two-step process.

This is interesting for various reasons. One is that it's a process that scientists had never realized existed before. Another is that a similar process occurs on Jupiter's moon Europa. The Hubble Space Telescope discovered that.

Astrochemistry is a growing discipline in astronomy, and it rounds out our understanding of the Solar System. Space telescopes and space probes push the boundaries of what we can find out from Earth.

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The European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta team is still looking for the lost lander Philae. Philae made the landing, but failed to engage the surface and bounced off a few times. They've been investigating photos taken, searching for Philae-sized objects. This is a collection of four promising candidates, three of which have now been eliminated. They're still hopeful about the fourth one.

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Two days ago ESA confirmed that the Rosetta mission will be extended until the end of September 2016, at which point the spacecraft will most likely be landed on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

This means they will be able to continue to study the comet as it moves away from the Sun. They'll be able to try some riskier investigations that wouldn't have been worthwhile earlier in the mission.

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Here is an image of Comet 67P/C-G taken last week by Rosetta's NAVCAM. The image has been processed to show more detail of the comet's activity as it's warming.

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The Rosetta/Philae outreach team has won the Sir Arthur Clarke Award for Space Achievement – Education and Outreach, 2015. The Sir Arthur Clarke Awards have been presented annually in the UK since 2005 to recognise and reward notable or outstanding achievements in, or contributions to, all space activities. They're sponsored by the UK Space Agency in collaboration with the British Interplanetary Society and Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.

The award committee’s citation noted that the team “turned a great scientific achievement into a really great popular science outreach achievement. They had the most engaged audience for a space event for a very long time, having created an extremely wide range of publicity material . . . They produced brochures, models, and posters and put out a continuous stream of blog posts, tweets, hang-outs, and a series of ‘Comet Hunter’ videos on Euronews to keep everyone up-to-date . . . . They also made brilliant teaching/educational resources available.”

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Sadly, we haven't heard from Philae lately. But Rosetta is very busy. The craft has been moved to what they hope will be a safe distance from the comet. It's less than two weeks to perihelion (the closest point to the Sun) and the increased activity could damage Rosetta if it's too close.

But ESA has released a wonderful set of images of the Imhotep region of the comet. I'd never thought of the nucleus of a comet as any more than a snowy dirt ball, but there is a surprising amount of geological diversity. Here is a mosaic of six images of Imhotep. (BTW They were taken from different distances, so the scale of the features varies.)

There's also a map of the region's features.

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Philae landed where it was supposed to, but it couldn't stay there. The system that would have secured Philae to the comet's surface didn't work. But there's more – apparently the landing site was covered in several inches of loose material, so the foot screws had nothing to hang onto. This soft dirt is as much as 2m (6-1/2 feet) deep in some places, while other places are rock hard. All of that is something Philae learned during the sixty hours of battery operation.

And there's lots more. In fact, there are seven scientific papers worth of information about Comet C-G which were published in Science recently. For example, up to 85% of the comet is hollow. And Philae found 16 organic compounds, four of them not detected in a comet before. These are the chemicals of life. That doesn't mean there's actually anything alive on the comet, but that it contains the sort of material from which life might arise. Perhaps in a place like Earth.

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Two pictures of Comet C-G, taken August 6, 2014 & August 6, 2015.

On the left is last year's photo, taken by Rosetta's NavCam on rendezvous day, at about 120 km away from the comet. The shape of the double-lobed comet was still new and strange at the time. It's quite familiar now. And during the last year Rosetta has orbited at various distances – from as close as 6 km (nearly 4 miles) to Comet C-G, and out to a few hundred kilometers. On the right is a picture taken just last week at 261 km (162 mi) from the comet.

During the year the comet has moved much closer to the Sun, from 540 million km to around 186 million km this week. The increase in the intensity of the Sun's energy has warmed the frozen ices and turned them to gas. The gases and some dust escape and form the comet's coma. All of the increased activity mean that Rosetta, for safety reasons, is currently operating at around 300 km (185 mi) away from the comet.

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Tomorrow (August 13) Comet C-G reaches perihelion. An orbit's perihelion is the closest point to the Sun. When the comet is that close, even dark areas will be brightly lit. Its activity will get higher after perihelion, but outbursts can happen any time.

The biggest outburst so far happened on July 29. Rosetta found that the erupting material from the comet was strong enough to push away the solar wind. (The Sun emits a stream of atomic particles that flow through the Solar System – it's called the solar wind.) The July eruption is shown here. Nothing was happening in the first picture, but the eruption is in full swing in the next picture 18 minutes later, and after another 18 minutes there are only traces of activity. (I admit that I can't see any traces.)

Carsten Güttler at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany commented, “Usually, the jets are quite faint compared to the nucleus and we need to stretch the contrast of the images to make them visible – but this one is brighter than the nucleus.”

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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


Deanna Joseph

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What are your Soul Gifts? Discover your true nature and potential, and learn who you are on a Soul Level with a Soul Realignmentâ„¢ reading.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 11/17/15 06:22 AM.
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Rosetta Mission's tribute to David Bowie (January 8, 1947 - January 10, 2016)

RIP David Bowie, fellow space traveller


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For the first time, scientists have spotted large patches of water ice on the surface of a comet , thanks to instruments aboard the European Space Agency's Rosetta orbiter. Scientists already knew that the coma - the expansive cloud of gas surrounding the comet's nucleus - is dominated by water molecules. They also knew that water ice is one of the main components of the nucleus. But until now, traces of water ice on the surface of the comet had been difficult to detect.

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If you look closely, you can see a heart-shaped boulder on the surface of Comet Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It's Valentine greetings from the Rosetta Mission team.

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Last week ground control made the decision not to send any more commands to the lander Philae, which has been silent since July 2015. The comet is moving farther from the Sun, so not only is there less sunlight to charge the batteries, but Philae's solar panels are likely to have acquired a coating of dust by now. In addition, temperatures drop to -180 degrees Celsius, which is too cold for the lander to function in any case.

Although Philae's landing didn't go as it should have, the lander but still completed “about 80% of its initial planned scientific activities,” according to ESA. Rosetta will still listen for communications, even though it's stopped sending new signals.

Here is a cute animation summarizing the Rosetta mission.

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One of the two discoverer's of Rosetta's comet was the Ukrainian astronomer Svetlana I. Gerasimenko. She was born on February 23, 1945. The co-discoverer was fellow Ukrainian Klim Churyumov, director of the Kiev Planetarium. So if you'ever wondered how Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko got its name, now you know!

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Rosetta is moving in closer to Comet 67P/c-G again. This NAVCAM image was taken on March 1, 2016, from 26.7 km away. In the image you see part of the large comet lobe, where the Imhotep region alopes down towards Bes. A jet of activity is clearly seen coming from the lower left edge.

Image Credits: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

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A unique view of Comet ‪#‎67P‬/Churyumov-Gerasimenko seen by the Rosetta Mission on 10 April from the weekend's flyby at a distance of 30 km. The comet is seen here with the big lobe in front and with Rosetta positioned almost exactly between sun and comet. This unique observing geometry reveals optical characteristics of the surface that cannot be seen otherwise.

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Rosetta has found ingredients for life in the dusty halo around Comet C-G. They are the chemical elements glycine and phosphorus. Glycine is the simplest amino acid and one of the molecules needed to make proteins, while phosphorus is a key component of DNA and cell membranes.

It shows that comets could have brought organic molecules to the young Earth, key building blocks for life.

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We haven't heard much about Rosetta lately, but that doesn't mean nothing is happening. Here is a video update from ESA about Rosetta. We learn that the spacecraft has been doing some low flying and there are plans to get her even closer to the surface before the mission ends in a few months.

The water found on Comet C-G isn't like water on Earth. Other comets might have brought water to Earth, but not this type of comet. However scientists have found glycine, an amino acid one of the building blocks of life. Very interesting.

Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 07/12/16 04:04 AM.
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The Rosetta mission has less than three months to go now. It is to end on September 30th with a controlled descent to the comet's surface. Rosetta has been in space for 12 years now, with two of them in the dusty environment of a comet. The craft has stood up well to all of this, but wouldn't be likely to survive the dark and cold of the most distant part of the orbit of Comet C-G. Rosetta relies on solar power and it's unlikely that there would be enough of it to keep the instruments from freezing.

Where will Rosetta be on September 30? The red line shows a section of the comet's orbit. As you can see, it's heading towards Jupiter's orbit.

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Yay! It's the cartoon version of Rosetta's second year on the comet. For kids of all ages, this little summary was released earlier this month.

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"X" doesn't mark the spot, a red circle shows the target for Rosetta's controlled impact on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 30 September 2016.

Quote:
The spacecraft will target Ma’at, a region hosting some active pits on the small comet lobe. This region has been chosen for its scientific potential and taking into account key operational constraints involved in executing the descent.

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ESA's Rosetta team made an announcement yesterday in the form of a tweet from the Rosetta spacecraft.

Quote:
ESA Rosetta Mission
@ESA_Rosetta

My power is decreasing so far from the Sun I can no longer listen for @philae2014:


Today at 11.00 UTC, they will switch off the Electrical Support System (ESS) on Rosetta, which was used to communicate with the lander Philae. There's been no communication with Philae for a year now. Switching off this system will save energy for Rosetta's final scientific endeavors before she joins Philae on the comet on September 30.

Here is a nice little video (under a minute) from New Scientist that tells the story: Bye Bye Philae

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