Scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) have released the first map of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in high-resolution images.
Comet 67P was first discovered in 1969 while astronomers from Kiev were surveying the comets. It belongs to Jupiter Family comets since its orbit is being controlled by Jupiter. However, scientists believe it might have originated from the small icy region beyond Neptune and reached its current location because of collisions or gravitational disruptions in between planets. Scientists are tracking its movement as it can provide insight on how Jupiter pushes a comet into the inner Solar System and near the Sun.
After a 10-year-long journey, Rosetta has reached its comet destination on early August and became the first spacecraft to rendezvous a comet. Its arrival at comet 67P marked a new beginning in Solar System exploration and a momentous event at ESA's Spacecraft Operations Center at Germany. It started collecting images of the comet's surface through OSIRIS, its main imaging system. It is equipped with two cameras intended for high-resolution mapping of the comet's nucleus and the gas and dust surrounding it.
Scientists were astounded seeing the details of the comet's surface; it has different regions, and each region has its distinctive appearance. It has cliffs, depressions, craters, boulders and parallel grooves. The researchers believe that the variations were because of the various activities in the comet.
"Never before have we seen a cometary surface in such detail," said OSIRIS Principal Investigator Holger Sierks from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Science (MPS) in Germany, in a NASA news release. "It is a historic moment - we have an unprecedented resolution to map a comet."
The researchers will continue monitoring the comet to see if there will be changes as it approaches the Sun. The results of the analysis will shed light on understanding how cometary activity alters the appearance of the comet.
"This first map is, of course, only the beginning of our work," added Sierks. "At this point, nobody truly understands how the surface variations we are currently witnessing came to be."
