Rosetta Comet Orbiter -** 120 Icy Patches ** Philae Phones Home ** Ceres Fly Over Video ** New Coma Discovery ** Picture MOTHER LODE !

Continuing the music theme, here is NASA's astronomy picture of the day.



[link to apod.nasa.gov]

It's the approach to comet Ugly^h^h^h^h 67P set to Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik.

K

That is not a silly idea at all. When Rosetta was first being planned in 1985 it was going to be a sample return mission in partnership with NASA. A lander would go down to the surface of the comet and collect a sample, which would then be brought all the way back to Earth for analysis.

By 1992 NASA could no longer fund its side of the mission, and ESA didn't believe it could afford to do a sample return mission on its own. Rosetta had to be redesigned as one way mission, miniaturising all the lab analysis equipment so it could be fitted into Rosetta and Philae.

Here is something about the on board analysis in the COSIMA instrument.

Thread: Rosetta Comet Orbiter -** 120 Icy Patches ** Philae Phones Home ** Ceres Fly Over Video ** New Coma Discovery ** Picture MOTHER LODE ! (Page 5)

K

ESA continues to post images but NASA isn't??

ESA (image taken yesterday 8/10..poste today)
[link to www.esa.int]

NASA (no images after the 6th)
[link to rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov]


Seems there's some sort of open data policy at NASA that could be at play. I found this data and information policy of theirs regarding NASA's Earth Science program.

It states:
"NASA's Earth Science program was established to use the advanced technology of NASA to understand and protect our home planet by using our view from space to study the Earth system and improve prediction of Earth system change. To meet this challenge, NASA promotes the full and open sharing of all data with the research and applications communities, private industry, academia, and the general public. The greater the availability of the data, the more quickly and effectively the user communities can utilize the information to address basic Earth science questions and provide the basis for developing innovative practical applications to benefit the general public."
[link to science1.nasa.gov]

I realize the policies may have differing charters perhaps but its interesting that the both the ISON observation campaign and now with 67P, amateur astronomers are encouraged to image these comets with the robotic telescopes that K Hall has mentioned.

Why not just post as many images as possible taken by the multi-milliion dollar equipment that US and European citizens paid for and let the amateur astronomers contribute any ideas that way?

I guess you mean this one.

[link to pbs.twimg.com (secure)]

Did you manage to see it in 3D, I found the effect was a bit excessive, all the craters seemed to stand out too much for me.

This hole is actually this crater/depression on the right.

[link to blogs.esa.int]

I wrote about it before here.

Thread: Rosetta Comet Orbiter -** 120 Icy Patches ** Philae Phones Home ** Ceres Fly Over Video ** New Coma Discovery ** Picture MOTHER LODE ! (Page 5)

K

There are a multitude of reasons why amateur data is important. I myself have been participating in that partnership. Amateur data provides a wealth of astrometric and photometric data on the comet being studied. Over the course of the mission this will also allow changes in the comet over time seen by the ground to be correlated to the data collected up close by the spacecraft. Such a long term and intense observing campaign can be conducted without any taxpayer money at all by amateur astronomers like me. That's a good thing, not a bad thing.

Indeed! Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can continue to make real contributions.

As for the "multi-milliion dollar equipment that US and European citizens paid for" - well, there's a limited amount of it, and it's in very high demand by professional astronomers for all sorts of projects, so observing time is carefully rationed (and paid for). It may sound like there's a lot of money spent on telescopes, but really, it's a drop in the ocean (compare it to what's spent on fast food or cosmetics every year!).

I've worked with astronomers who get only a few hours of scope time per year to get data for their research, and amateurs can often help fill the gaps. I wish I had the time to do more, but I try when I can.

I think maybe you and astro misunderstood what I was trying to say. I'm trying to focus on the present -- 67P Rosetta and the multi-million dollar equipment on Rosetta and Philae (when deployed). Why use earth bound or space bound equipment that isn't at the comet for data analysis (this is a unique experience)? Surely no amateurs have access to Rosetta equipment right?

What I'm saying is ESA/NASA Rosetta teams should upload much more visual data and even non-visual data for (as stated above in their Earth Science data sharing policy) the ability for specialists not on ESA/NASA Rosetta teams, amateurs and the general public to provide input.

As an example we have been studying Mars up close visually starting with the Viking mission since what '74-'75. At first planetary scientists thought they knew exactly what some of the more larger formations were and perhaps how they formed as they were similar to Earth's formations -- Olympus Mons (shield volcano) and Vales Marineris (canyon system).

Mars is like half the size of Earth with something like one-quarter the surface area but Olympus Mons dwarfs Mt Everest and Valles Marineris dwarfs the Grand Canyon.

When we look closer at the surface of Mars many abnormalities appear within what look like Earth-like formations. Olympus Mons is no shield volcano. At virtually every formation; river beds, canyons, collapsed lava tubes, craters, domed craters, etc., on Mars, they have planetary scientists baffled.

Let's see the close-up images of 67P. Let the planetary scientists and comet specialists have a better look, after all the Rosetta mission is a mission to better understand planetary and solar system formation and planets and our solar system aren't owned by gov't space agencies ... at least not yet!!

For the reasons I already explained, that is why.

Ah, what you're really saying is that all data from Rosetta should be made immediately available to everyone in the world and the principle investigators should not have any dibs on the data, thus rewarding those who are first to scoop and publish it rather than those who carefully planned, proposed, and conducted the mission. If that were the case it would reward those who "rush to publication" rather than thoughtful scientific work, and it would mean that there was no long term incentive to provide mission support in the first place. That would be a rather short sighted approach.

At the very least they could make a lot more of it public, including the close-up images we aren't getting. The teams at mission centers are going to do their work anyway and publish when they are ready. Just because they publish doesn't mean the members of the team all agree with the conclusions and perhaps a planetary scientists or comet specialist not assoc with the teams could provide valuable input. I don't see that as short-sighted. Why limit input?

You'll get plenty of close up images, be patient.

If they dumped every bit of data immediately upon reception other competing scientists could make the discoveries and publish them first. Which would defeat the primary point of being a mission scientist. Like it or not, the mission scientists get the chance to work with it first.

BG-Fan, we have all already had this conversation in the other thread. Just to remind you, here is the ESA policy and explanation.

[link to blogs.esa.int]

Could I ask you to please just quote the relevant sections when replying as replies can get very long and other comments can get lost.

A few days ago we had a conversation about you starting your own threads. You have revisited this question about access to ESA data here and in Siding Spring thread ( maybe elsewhere IDK ). If you feel so strongly about it why not start a thread focused on that subject. I welcome all contributions but I feel you have enough you want to say on this subject to justify its own thread.

K

Do non-mission scientists get a crack at some point, say a year or more after the mission to see ALL the data (as you say) and publish their conclusions if they so choose?

Edit: Answered part of my question by reading through K Hall's blog link above:
"That said, the proprietary period is finite and usually rather short, to ensure that the instrument teams and winning proposers don't sit on the data: at the end of the period, the norm in space science is that all of the data become freely available to all scientists and the general public, world-wide. For example, all of the data from ESA's Herschel mission are now open to all via our archives, as are many of the data from Mars Express and our other missions."



Last Edited by Birkeland on 08/11/2014 05:49 PM

Did they decide on a landing spot yet? I know that it will still take a while to do all the mapping and measurements, but with the existing data they might have a preference for a specific region. Just wondering.

If you have been following the thread, you will know that Rosetta caught up with the comet last week, if not, here is a very good little summary from Euronews that should help you get up to speed with this amazing mission.



[link to www.youtube.com (secure)]

K

Seeing Matt Taylor in that video reminded me that he posted pictures of a new tattoo.

[link to twitter.com (secure)]

This one is of ESA's cluster magnetic mapping project.
[link to sci.esa.int]

There is a rumour that Dr. Astro has a huge tattoo of a telescope across his back with the legend "From my cold dead hands!" ;)

K

Hi KipKat, they started to gather the information they need for that last week. Over the next three weeks they are weighing the comet by flying in a triangular orbit pattern and seeing how much the comet's gravity bends the orbit. While this is happening they are also going to try and map 80% of the comets surface to find out about density distribution and surface composition.

They need to find a balance between a rough cratered area that may be too rough and inactive and a smooth area which may be too active and mobile. They also have to land on an area which alternates between lit and unlit to get the most interesting data, unlit areas are very unlikely to be active.

One problem they have is that when Philae was designed it was assumed that comet's surfaces were a relatively hard mixture of ice and dust. Back in 2005 a state of the art space camera recorded the Deep impact mission on comet Temple 1, the conclusion was that comets were a lot dustier and less icy than originally thought. Unfortunately the camera was the OSIRIS camera mounted on Rosetta, it was already on it's way to comet 67P with a lander designed for a harder surface.

The landing itself will be more like bombing the comet from 10,000m up. Philae is not a smart bomb, it will be unguided on the way down, so at the moment they are predicting a landing ellipse ( area it may land in ) as big as 1 square km. When you consider the comet itself is only 4km across, that's pretty big.

Rosetta will be in an orbit around 67P's terminator line ( in line with 67P's rotation ) this unfortunately gives a very uneven track over the "ground" of the comet. Altogether it looks desperately difficult and ambitious but ESA engineers and scientists have been planning for this for over 15 years so I still think they can do it.

Here is a blog entry about Stefan Ulamec's presentation last week concerning landing Philae and landing site selection.

[link to blogs.esa.int]

For the best idea about what is going on, listen to his presentation, starting from about 24 minutes, in this video

[link to www.esa.int]

I don't think I have posted a video simulation of Philae landing since page 1 so here goes.



[link to www.youtube.com (secure)]

K

If your are in the UK ( or you can use a pr0xy ) you will be able to watch Sunday's Sky at Night which was all about Rosetta and also had observing notes on comet C/2014 E2 Jacques.

[link to www.bbc.co.uk]

During the programme, Dr Natalie Starkey described how she believes there is a continuum of objects all the way from NEO asteroids out to scattered disk comets which are essentially the same but with varying proportions of rock and ices.

K

The NAVCAM picture from the 11th is showing the space duck orientation again.

[link to www.esa.int]

Rosetta is performing its triangular manoeuvres a little ahead of 67P on the sunward side. That boulder field, or collection of outcrops on the neck is near the axis of rotation. This model shows that rotation clearly.

[link to blogs.esa.int]

Rosetta will be orbiting 67P in this plane i.e what you are seeing in this model will be Rosetta's perspective once it has settled into a low orbit.

K

Are the craters along the foot of this image from impact or outgassing? They seem to be fairly significant in size given the nucleus is 4km.

[link to www.esa.int]

this one may be a better example:
[link to rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov]

Last Edited by Birkeland on 08/13/2014 05:00 PM

Well, it's going to be one or the other. At the moment we can only speculate. From next month Rosetta will be orbiting much lower and I imagine ESA will be able to collect some good data and start to understand the structure of the nucleus using VIRTIS, ALICE, MIRO and OSIRIS data in concert. That is one of the features of the mission, to combine sensor data from multiple sensors to get a much clearer picture of what is going on.

Here is the same view but in sunlight.

[link to blogs.esa.int]

You can see the crater walls are sloping inwards and the basin is partially filled with material. I would guess these are impact craters.

When I first saw the high detailed pictures of 67P I was struck by what seemed to be mesas. Flat topped structures, maybe capped by layers of dust, with vertical side walls. This pattern was repeated at lower levels so there seems to be terraces of these structures.

[link to www.esa.int]

[link to www.esa.int]

I am going to speculate that the dusty tops protect these outcrops from ablating away when exposed to the sun, less well protected areas surrounding them could ablate away at a quicker pace, leaving these vertical walls. Eventually these lower lying areas build up a circular dome of dust that insulates them from the sun. This made me think about hoodoos, where a hard cap rock protects the softer rock under it from erosion.

[link to upload.wikimedia.org]

So, like I said, I'm just speculating for fun, we may have a long wait until we understand the structure of comets. It is one year today to perihelion.

BTW I'm sorry but I don't have and hour and a half to watch the electric video on crater formation. If you want to post it, why not summarise the main points.

K

Thanks. We're all trying to better understand.

I'm not going to post any videos or ramble about EU going forward here.

I'm actually only about a year into studying comets and much less than that planetary formation.

I'm like everyone else trying to see things in the images, which I wish were much closer. In this image you linked below there's a lot going on everywhere and sometimes that's just the angle and why a close-up is better.

This image shows 2 huge craters that obviously aren't outgassing. I imagine the surface jetting structure would be much smaller almost negligible from this view and if the craters are impacts why are there not other cometesimals attached. If the collisions did not end in a binary, trinary or quadnary but left a crater that size I would think the nucleus is rather solid.

Just thinking out loud!

Which just made me wonder .. is there such a thing as a trinary or larger?

[link to blogs.esa.int]

Edit: if you zoom click on the large crater to the left it appears to have a rather steep wall -- deep impact??

Last Edited by Birkeland on 08/13/2014 06:36 PM

I don't mind you posting videos ( If you want to repost the same one, just link back to where you first posted it in this thread ) I have actually been asking for electric universe predictions ( theories must make strong predictions ) and have done some calculations myself.

Thread: Rosetta Comet Orbiter -** 120 Icy Patches ** Philae Phones Home ** Ceres Fly Over Video ** New Coma Discovery ** Picture MOTHER LODE ! (Page 2)

That's why the thread title always has my estimation of the voltage needed today for a zap. So far only one guy has stuck his head above the parapet and given a figure, thanks Nox, you still have time to join in too.

I will be writing about Thunderb*lts apparently dropping the electric comet idea later ( probably not today ).



I get the impression you like weird, offbeat, fantastical science, so do I. I would recommend you read into quantum mechanics, It's insane and also true at the same time :)



If they carry on releasing a NAVCAM a day then in ten days we will have twice the resolution and by early October we will have ten times the resolution.



The comet is not very active yet, If these are active areas, they will show up in the coming months, I tend towards thinking the large basins are impact basins. The active area on the neck that Holger Sierks found is actually pretty big.



One does not imply the other. The fact that 67P has been impacted by much smaller bodies travelling at relatively high velocity does not imply that it should come into contact with another comet at low relative velocity.



If you push a rifle bullet into a watermelon, you have something larger and more massive than a watermelon. If you fire a rifle bullet at a watermelon you get a different result.



So far comet densities are estimated to be 0.6g cm-3, water ice density is 0.93 g cm-3 and silicate rock is around 3 g cm-3. Right now the flight dynamics people and the OSIRIS people are working together to weigh and map the comet so that Rosetta can go into orbit around it. I think we may be told an initial density estimate quite soon.



Yes, the planetesimal hypothesis says that all the large solid bodies in the solar system formed from the accretion of very large numbers of smaller bodies ( planetesimals ). Rosetta will help to test hypotheses like this one by studying the composition of 67P, that is one of the mission aims.

K

You'll get plenty of close up images, be patient.


These pics don't airbrush themselves, people.

Now we have alien buildings in 67P: Thread: 8/11/2014 LEAKED! RAW ROSETTA IMAGES OF ALIEN BUILDINGS ON COMET 67P

.

So far I like ESA's images best, less shadows and some zoom capability.

Strictly from an observational point of view, it looks to me like these are two separate bodies and at the point of contact there seems to be an inordinate amount of dust and regolith. Do you agree or is it just me?

With that said, I wonder if this has anything to do with the above observation.

Thread: Scientists theorize that weak electric forces may be holding many asteroids together

I have tears rolling down my face as I read your post, I didn't realise you had an uncle in ESA ;)

Expect a lot more of that in October for Siding Spring and November for 67P. In the end there were 3,390 ISON threads, not bad for a tiny comet that was hardly visible and fell apart before it had the chance to really shine.

K

The good news for Rosetta fans is that ESA is continuing to release OSIRIS pictures weekly on a Thursday along with their daily NAVCAM pictures.

Yesterday's OSIRIS picture was an image of the neck region, actually it was two images that the OSIRIS team have combined into a red green 3D image ( anaglyph ).

[link to blogs.esa.int]

Here is the hires version

[link to www.esa.int]

and one of the source images.

[link to www.esa.int]

The resolution here is around 2m per pixel, eventually we will reach 20cm per pixel.

I don't have any red green glasses, I have blue - yellow ones and circular polarising 3d glasses, never mind. I still really like this stereogram from Queen's ( and Imperial's ) Dr Brian May.

[link to pbs.twimg.com (secure)]

Thread: Rosetta Comet Orbiter -** 120 Icy Patches ** Philae Phones Home ** Ceres Fly Over Video ** New Coma Discovery ** Picture MOTHER LODE ! (Page 6)

K

No it is not possible for comets to have net potential difference to the Sun, each other, with Rosetta or Mars.

Outside of the frost line, around 5 AU, comets have no atmosphere, coma, tails or magnetosphere. They are effectively immersed in the interplanetary medium ( including the solar wind ) which extends out to at least 80 AU and probably much further. The solar wind is a thermally ionised quasi neutral ( equal +ve -ve charges ) plasma which is an excellent conductor. Anything immersed in this plasma, like a comet nucleus must come to the same potential as all the other bodies. Think, could you have an electro-statically charged object, drop it into an earthed bath of brine and still find a p.d. to earth on the object? The charge would dissipate very quickly.

We know the solar wind is an excellent conductor and have actually observed the solar wind conducting a current since 1965. The Sun's rotating magnetic field induces a small ( billions of amps, everything is relative ;) current in the interplanetary medium, which travels radially outward from the sun and returns at it's poles.
[link to www.leif.org]



I think so. I like dark and gloomy dystopian British sci-fi rather than the laser guns and spaceships American sci-fi. I saw the film adaptation of Never Let Me Go recently, that was too depressing.

K

Started to comment on this image yesterday. Looks like a large landslide in the middle.