Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko / Science
Science · Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
These are six research papers, all free to read on arXiv, about Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. We summarize each one in plain English from its abstract.
Our own artist's impression. No figures are taken from the papers.
What Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko is made of and how its surface behaves.
What they foundThe active pits Rosetta saw could form when buried ice cages (clathrates) break down or amorphous ice crystallises at the depth of the pits.
Computer models of heat flowing into the subsurface of 67P's Seth region.
What they foundThe team mapped where 14 gases, from water and CO₂ to methanol and ethanol, come off 67P's surface over the two-year mission.
Rosetta ROSINA COPS and DFMS gas-density measurements, fitted onto the comet's shape model.
What they foundDust at 67P is made of aggregates of smaller, elongated grains.
In-place measurements by an instrument on the Rosetta orbiter that collected dust particles.
How Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko moves, and the gravity and sunlight forces that shape its path.
What they foundRosetta's own tracking data revealed how 67P's outgassing pushes on the comet and how the push varies through each comet day.
Orbit refinement of Rosetta's trajectory and rotation data.
What they foundBefore Rosetta, modelling of the forces from outgassing suggested 67P is a slightly elongated body (axial ratio about 1.16).
Fits of 67P's observed motion including non-gravitational forces.
Where Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko came from and how it formed and changed over time.
What they foundModels of 67P as a pile of small dust 'pebbles' reproduce its measured heat-holding behaviour.
Calculations of thermal inertia for layered aggregates of pebbles, compared with Rosetta observations.
New papers on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, checked weekly, summarized after a person reads it.
No new papers on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko this week. We check arXiv every week.
We search arXiv for Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko papers and keep the ones that add something new, are clearly written up and are relevant to a general reader. A person reads every abstract.
Summaries are written by us from each paper’s abstract, not copied. Diagrams are our own simplified drawings, not figures from the papers.
“Peer-reviewed” means arXiv lists a journal reference for the paper. Everything else is marked “Preprint”: shared openly, possibly before or without journal review.
Paper metadata courtesy of arXiv. Summaries written by us; read the original papers via the links. Paper metadata from arXiv.org, which does not endorse this site.