COBS News archive
CometWatch 5 September
September 15, 2015
CometWatch 30 August
September 15, 2015
Comet hitchhiker would take tour of small bodies
September 07, 2015
Comet impacts may have led to life on Earth -- and perhaps elsewhere
September 07, 2015
Comet impact on Earth are synonymous with great extinctions, but now research presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Prague shows that early comet impact would have become a driving force to cause substantial synthesis of peptides -- the first building blocks of life. This may have implications for the genesis of life on other worlds.
CometWatch 26 August
September 07, 2015
CometWatch 22 August 2015
September 07, 2015
CometWatch 16 August
September 07, 2015
Today's CometWatch entry was taken three days after the perihelion of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, on 16 August 2015. At the time, Rosetta was 331 km from the comet, which in turn was just over 186 million km from the Sun and almost 265 million km from Earth. This single frame NAVCAM image has a resolution of 28.2 m/pixel and it measures 28.9 km across.
Rosetta’s big day in the Sun
August 17, 2015
Comet’s firework display ahead of perihelion
August 17, 2015
CometWatch 6 August
August 15, 2015
Organic molecules on comets: Philae's first results from Churi prove surprising
August 05, 2015
Organic molecules never previously observed in comets, a relatively varied structure on the surface but a fairly homogeneous interior, organic compounds forming agglomerates rather than being dispersed in the ice: these are just some of first results provided by Philae on the surface of comet Churi. These in situ findings, which contain a wealth of completely new information, reveal several differences in comparison with previous observations of comets and current models.
Comets: Soft shell, hard core?
August 05, 2015
Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko poses new riddles: Surface material measurements performed by the Philae landing module indicate that the near surface material might have changed since its formation. Up to now, many researchers had assumed that it has remained in virtually the same state since its formation about 4.5 billion years ago.
CometWatch 30 July
August 05, 2015
First release of Rosetta comet phase data from four orbiter instruments
August 04, 2015
Rosetta shows how comet interacts with the solar wind
July 31, 2015
This blog post is based on the papers “Evolution of the ion environment of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: Observations between 3.6 and 2.0 AU ” by H. Nilsson et al.; “Rosetta observations of solar wind interaction with the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko” by T.W. Broiles et al.; and “Solar Wind Sputtering of Dust on the Surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko ” by Peter Wurz et al., which have all been accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics, and “Dynamical features and spatial structures of the plasma interaction region of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and the solar wind” by C. Koenders et al, which is published in Planetary and Space Science.
CometWatch 20 July
July 31, 2015
Video report: Rosetta orbiter science
July 24, 2015
It is almost a year since the Rosetta spacecraft began orbiting comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 6 August 2014. The orbiter’s eleven instruments are studying the comet at different wavelengths - infrared, ultraviolet, microwave and radio – as well as gathering high-resolution images and information about its shape, density, temperature and chemical composition.
Inside Imhotep
July 23, 2015
Imhotep, on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko's large lobe, is one of the most geologically diverse regions observed by Rosetta. This blog post presents the results of a new paper by Anne-Thérese Auger from the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM, France) et al, which describes Imhotep's key features and discusses possible scenarios for this region's evolution. The post was prepared with inputs from Anne-Thérese and co-author Olivier Groussin, also from LAM.
CometWatch 14 July
July 23, 2015
Getting to know Rosetta’s comet: boundary conditions
July 16, 2015
In January the first maps of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko were published, identifying 19 geomorphologically distinct regions on its surface. Six months on and much more work has been done on refining the boundaries between these regions. This blog post showcases some of the OSIRIS images acquired from close orbit and presented in a new paper that have enabled an in-depth study of the different regions and their boundaries. This post was prepared with inputs from lead author M. Ramy El-Maarry from the University of Bern, who introduces this post with an inside story on how some of the regional names were chosen: