Rosetta sees a blaze of cometary activity

17 January 2015 Astronomy Now
OSIRIS wide-angle camera image acquired on 22 November 2014 from a distance of 30 km from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The image resolution is 2.8 m/pixel. The nucleus is deliberately overexposed in order to reveal the faint jets of activity. Image: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
OSIRIS wide-angle camera image acquired on 22 November 2014 from a distance of 30 km from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The image resolution is 2.8 m/pixel. The nucleus is deliberately overexposed in order to reveal the faint jets of activity. Image: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

The high resolution camera aboard Rosetta has captured this stunning view of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko showing multiple jets streaming away from the surface.

The OSIRIS imaging instrument deliberately over exposed the comet to capture the escaping gas and dust. This view, which was taken on 22 November last year but only just released, is a tantalising glimpse of what can be expected as the comet closes in on the Sun.

“This is still the beginning of the activity compared to what we expect to see in summer this year,” says OSIRIS principal investigator Holger Sierks from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany. “From the last perihelion passage we know that the comet will evolve by a factor of 100 in activity at that time compared to now.”

Read more on the Rosetta Blog.

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While 2014 was the year the Rosetta spacecraft celebrated making it into orbit around a comet, 2015 was the year it got down to some serious hard work. Its comet, with the tongue-twisting name 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, made its closest approach (186 million kilometres) to the Sun, a period known as perihelion when the comet would be expected to be at its most active. Rosetta was there to witness this.