Related papers: Summer fireworks on comet 67P
Comets are primitive objects that formed in the protoplanetary disk, and have been largely preserved over the history of the Solar System. However, they are not pristine, and surfaces of cometary nuclei do evolve. In order to understand the…
The massive outburst of the comet 17P/Holmes in October 2007 is the largest known outburst by a comet thus far. We present a new comprehensive model describing the evolution of the dust trail produced in this phenomenon. The model comprises…
The processes that led to the formation of the planetary bodies in the Solar System are still not fully understood. Using the results obtained with the comprehensive suite of instruments on-board ESA's Rosetta mission, we present evidence…
We use measurements from the Rosetta plasma consortium (RPC) Langmuir probe (LAP) and mutual impedance probe (MIP) to study the spatial distribution of low-energy plasma in the near-nucleus coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The…
The nucleus of the Jupiter-family comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was discovered to be bi-lobate in shape when the European Space Agency spacecraft Rosetta first approached it in July 2014. The bi-lobate structure of the cometary nucleus…
Before Rosetta, the space missions Giotto and Stardust shaped our view on cometary dust, supported by plentiful data from Earth based observations and interplanetary dust particles collected in the Earth's atmosphere. The Rosetta mission at…
The dynamics of a rigid cometary nucleus is described by the evolutions of its center-of-mass and of its rotation state. Solar irradiation that reaches the surface of a cometary nucleus causes the sublimation of volatiles that form the coma…
We investigate the ability of a simultaneous fitting of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko's non-gravitational forces, torques and total water-outgassing rate, as observed by Rosetta, to constrain complex thermophysical models of cometary…
Infrared observations of the coma of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko were carried out from July to September 2015, i.e., around perihelion (13 August 2015), with the high-resolution channel of the VIRTIS instrument onboard Rosetta. We present the…
The first 1000 km of the ion tail of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko were explored by the European Rosetta spacecraft, 2.7 au away from the Sun. We characterised the dynamics of both the solar wind and the cometary ions on the night-side of…
The Rosetta mission provided us with detailed data of the surface of the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.In order to better understand the physical processes associated with the comet activity and the surface evolution of its…
We present results from our 47-night imaging campaign of Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak conducted from Lowell Observatory between 2017 February 16 and July 2. Coma morphology revealed gas jets, whose appearance and motion as a function…
We collect observational evidence that supports the scheme of mass transfer on the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The obliquity of the rotation axis of 67P causes strong seasonal variations. During perihelion the southern…
Thanks to the Rosetta mission, our understanding of comets has greatly improved. A very good opportunity to apply this knowledge appeared in early 2017 with the appearance of the Jupiter family comet 41P/TGK. We performed an observational…
Water ice-rich patches have been detected on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the VIRTIS hyperspectral imager on-board the Rosetta spacecraft, since the orbital insertion in late August 2014. Among those, three icy patches…
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) become observable for the first time in 2021 since the Rosetta rendezvous in 2014--16. Here, we present pre-perihelion polarimetric measurements of 67P from 2021 performed with the Very Large Telescope…
Solar wind charge-changing reactions are of paramount importance to the physico-chemistry of the atmosphere of a comet. The ESA/Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) provides a unique opportunity to study charge-changing…
The Langmuir Probe instrument on Rosetta monitored the photoelectron emission cur- rent of the probes during the Rosetta mission at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, in essence acting as a photodiode monitoring the solar ultraviolet…
One of the main aims of the ESA Rosetta mission is to study the origin of the solar system by exploring comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at close range. In this paper we discuss the origin and evolution of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in…
Multiple outbursts of a Jupiter-family comet, 15P/Finlay, occurred from late 2014 to early 2015. We conducted an observation of the comet after the first outburst and subsequently witnessed another outburst on 2015 January 15.6-15.7. The…