Related papers: Constraints on the ejecting-crust activity model o…
We present a summary of the campaign of remote observations that supported the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission. Telescopes across the globe (and in space) followed comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from before Rosetta's arrival until…
Context. Comets are primitive objects, remnants of the volatile-rich planetesimals from which the solar system condensed. Knowing their structure and composition is thus crucial for the understanding of our origins. After the successful…
Context. The first long-term in-situ observation of the plasma environment in the vicinity of a comet, as provided by the European Rosetta spacecraft. Aims. Here we offer characterisation of the solar wind flow near…
Context. The Stardust flyby mission to Jupiter-family comet (JFC) 81P/Wild 2 (hereafter, 81P) captured its dense quasicircular depressions. Nevertheless, the formation mechanism remains a subject of ongoing debate. Aims. We aimed to study…
On November 12, 2014, the ESA/Rosetta descent module Philae landed on the Abydos site of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Aboard this module, the Ptolemy mass spectrometer measured a CO/CO2 ratio of 0.07 +/- 0.04 which differs substantially…
We present Rosetta RPC case study from four events at various radial distance, phase angle and local time from autumn 2015, just after perihelion of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Pulse like (high amplitude, up to minutes in time)…
The Rosetta spacecraft detected transient and sporadic diamagnetic regions around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In this paper we present a statistical analysis of bulk and suprathermal electron dynamics, as well as a case study of…
Kuiper-like belts of planetesimals orbiting stars other than the Sun are most commonly detected from the thermal emission of small dust produced in collisions. Emission from gas, most notably CO, highlights the cometary nature of these…
The trajectories of dust particles ejected from a comet are affected by solar radiation pressure as a function of their ratios of radiation pressure cross section to mass. Therefore, a study on the orbital evolution of the particles caused…
The Alice far-ultraviolet imaging spectrograph onboard Rosetta observed emissions from atomic and molecular species from within the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko during the entire escort phase of the mission from 2014 August to…
Studying materials released from Jupiter-family comets (JFCs) -- as seen in their inner com\ae, the envelope of gas and dust that forms as the comet approaches the Sun -- improves the understanding of their origin and evolutionary history.…
Cliff collapses on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko expose relatively pristine nucleus matter and offer rare opportunities to characterise ice-rich comet material. Here, Microwave Instrument for \emph{Rosetta} Orbiter (MIRO) observations of…
Cometary activity is a manifestation of sublimation-driven processes at the surface of nuclei. However, cometary outbursts may arise from other processes that are not necessarily driven by volatiles. In order to fully understand nuclear…
We developed a thermophysical model for cometary nuclei, which is based upon the assumption that comets form by the gravitational instability of an ensemble of dust and ice aggregates. Under this condition, the tensile strength of the…
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…
We present a simple model for gas and dust flow from 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko that can be used to understand the grain impact observed by the DIM instrument on Philae (Krueger et al. 2015) We show how model results when applied to the…
We analyze 2-5 micrometre spectroscopic observations of the dust coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko obtained with the VIRTIS-H instrument onboard Rosetta from 3 June to 29 October 2015 at heliocentric distances r_h = 1.24-1.55 AU. The…
Comets are remnants of the icy planetesimals that formed beyond the ice line in the Solar Nebula. Growing from micrometre-sized dust and ice particles to km-sized objects is, however, difficult because of growth barriers and time scale…
Our knowledge about the physical processes determining the activity of comets were mainly influenced by several extremely successful space missions, the predictions of theoretical models and the results of laboratory experiments. However,…
Aims. Observations of solar protons near comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) by the Rosetta spacecraft can be modelled by the planar motion in an effective magnetic field proportional to 1/r^2. We aim to provide a thorough study of such…