Instrument commissioning phase, Beginning final approach to the comet Options

[Bjorn Jonsson]

There is a lot of interesting detail hidden in the bright areas.

I see something that might possibly be hints of at least one big topographic feature (crater?) or a big albedo feature.

[Harder]

To follow on from nprev's comment:

This may actually be good news for the Philea lander: it’s design was premised on a 40-fold lower gravity on the originally targeted comet 46P/Wirtanen.

On the other hand the odd shape of 67P-/CG that has now been revealed may pose a major new hurdle for the nav team: the nav camera’s must be able to keep the Philea landing ellipse in view at all time.

Exciting times ahead.. dictated by orbital mechanics Rosetta inexorably moves towards its destination (is “destiny” too much to say here?) and the Rosetta team has no spare time to park the issue and study it at length. Or perhaps this is already one of their pre-worked scenario’s - let's hope so!

[Hungry4info]

it's time we start taking bets...
will the nucleus look like this or like this?

Looks like we were all in for a surprise

[Explorer1]

Animated GIF by someone on the blog post:
http://i.imgur.com/4mClCsN.gif

[JohnVV]

well at least it is somewhat triangular the "lightcurve" shape file is a rough fit

[Astro0]

There is a lot of interesting detail hidden in the bright areas. I'm not posting anything now, but if you can play with images, have a look,

I did play with that last image.....amazing!




Sorry, had to be done. Now moving on....

[JohnVV]

the FIRST thing that came to mind is a line from a old 1962 comedy LP ( vinyl ) "the first family"
and a quote from it
"... and the rubber ducky is mine"

[Ron Hobbs]

Looks like we were all in for a surprise
[/quote]

That is why we explore!

[Paolo]

another link in French

the most interesting sentence states that two imaging sequences are now expected every week.

meanwhile, the Rosetta blog has an update on the latest braking burn

[nprev]

Just thought of an exciting possibility: What are the odds that the two lobes had significantly different histories before 'bonding', as in formed in different areas of the primordial nebula?

Probably not likely. However:

- The formative collision had to happen at fairly low relative velocity. That argues that they were neighbors, quite possibly siblings during their formation.

-Conversely, CG is now an inner Solar System object, and it most likely did not form in what is effectively our neck of the woods.

--If they formed in the Oort Cloud as neighbors & bonded, then they're stuck together real well since they almost certainly had to survive at least one encounter with Jupiter to achieve CG's present orbit.

--If they met & stuck together at or near where they are now heliocentrically, then they could have formed at different locations in the Oort. However, ending up in this state would be amazingly unlikely.

--Still, it seems at least as unlikely that they are fragments of an original object that calved during a close passage & subsequently reunited since they'd tend to drift apart due to independent outgassing events at the very least.

Bottom line here is that we've seen that a contact binary asteroid in the main Belt is not unusual because relative velocities are low between most of these objects. A contact binary comet in the same region does seem unusual, unless CG is an intermediate object between those two classes that formed in the inner Solar System.

Lots of interesting possibilities, and no doubt many future surprises ahead. This is gonna be a really, really fascinating mission.

[Gerald]

Large numbers make the unlikely happen.

Throw one dart; how likely is it to hit Bull's Eye from 5 meters distance?
Now repeat the same experiment 10,000 times.

From the large number of Oort objects and the chaotic nature of n-body systems like our solar system, a large number of scenarios are possible.

I'm sure we'll learn things we didn't anticipate, each of the next weeks.

The two parts look different in their shape: While the larger component is going to get a lenticular appearance with possibly a deep valley or a small third component, the smaller one seems to be more similar to a cube, possibly heavily cratered.
The roughly lenticular shape of the larger component might be the result of rotation during formation, whereas the smaller one may have rotated less, but may have experienced more collisions.

This is totally preliminary today, and we'll know much more within days.

[Gerald]

Access to Rosetta data:

After yesterday's unscheduled release of images of 67P/C-G, our next release will be tomorrow at 15:00 CEST as planned...

[Phil Stooke]

I think the "unscheduled" release has been so widely distributed now that I can show my processing of it.

Phil

[Gerald]

That's one of my processed versions

and as animation:

Credit for the raw images: ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA

[Astro0]

An animation of Phil's processed images with interframes to smooth out the action



Credit for the raw images: ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA