Comet science: Rosetta and beyond
Lead Research Organisation:
The Open University
Department Name: Faculty of Sci, Tech, Eng & Maths (STEM)
Abstract
Comets have fascinated, and terrified, people throughout recorded history. The unpredictable appearances of bright comets, even in times when the motions of the "wandering stars" (planets) were well understood, meant that they were treated with suspicion. Today, our knowledge of comets has come a long way, but there are still many puzzles left to solve. As I write this, telescopes and spacecraft scattered all over the solar system are tracking comet ISON as it plunges toward the Sun, but we still cannot predict whether it will light up the sky as a "Great comet" or fizzle out before it arrives.
Nowadays we are interested in comets not as harbingers of doom, but because we can use them to learn about the disc of rock and ice that formed the planets. Comets and asteroids are the leftover "building blocks" from the early days of the solar system; the survivors that didn't get incorporated into one of the planets, crash into the Sun, or get thrown out of the system altogether.
The next few years will be an exciting time in cometary science, as the ESA mission "Rosetta" will be exploring comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in great detail. This audacious mission will, for the first time ever, rendezvous with a comet and follow it on its orbit around the Sun. Its array of scientific instruments will watch as the activity of the comet evolves. This mission will not only get closer to a comet than any previous spacecraft (down to only a few km from the surface, flying deep within jets of gas and dust), and be the first to spend an extended period of time watching changes on the comet; it will also land a probe on the surface, to find out exactly what the comet is made of.
I will work on the data that will be returned by Rosetta, especially through the camera system OSIRIS, and also by parallel ground-based observations of the comet. Such ground-based context observations are of critical importance: While the spacecraft will return very detailed information about the nucleus and inner coma of one particular comet, we need to be able to see how these details correspond to the large-scale activity that can be observed with telescopes in order to relate this to comets in general. I am coordinating a campaign of observations from telescopes worldwide. This will include a significant contribution from amateur astronomers, and from UK schools via the Faulkes Telescope project, when the comet is bright enough. Together, these data will reveal how cometary activity works.
In addition to 67P, I will also observe other comets for comparison. These will include those of the same class, the short-period "Jupiter family" comets, and also other types such as main belt and long-period comets, including comet ISON. The interaction between the Sun and comets like ISON, which get very close to the solar surface, not only tells us about how highly active comets behave under extreme heating conditions, but can also reveal new information about the Sun itself and the environment around it. Main belt comets are at the other end of the cometary activity scale: They are a recently discovered missing link between icy comets and rocky asteroids, with asteroid-like orbits but weak comet-like activity. They are also a potential source of Earth's water: It is much easier to have delivered water from the outer asteroid belt to the early Earth than it is to account for all of it from the impact of "normal" comets.
My work will look at the differences in the activity of the three classes of comet (high-activity near-Sun comets, medium-activity Jupiter family comets, and low-activity main belt comets), and the question of whether the variation is due to the different source regions they come from, or due to the environment in which they are active now. This "nature vs. nurture" question for comets will provide clues about the properties of different areas of the planet-forming disc, and the evolution of icy bodies over the age of the solar system.
Nowadays we are interested in comets not as harbingers of doom, but because we can use them to learn about the disc of rock and ice that formed the planets. Comets and asteroids are the leftover "building blocks" from the early days of the solar system; the survivors that didn't get incorporated into one of the planets, crash into the Sun, or get thrown out of the system altogether.
The next few years will be an exciting time in cometary science, as the ESA mission "Rosetta" will be exploring comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in great detail. This audacious mission will, for the first time ever, rendezvous with a comet and follow it on its orbit around the Sun. Its array of scientific instruments will watch as the activity of the comet evolves. This mission will not only get closer to a comet than any previous spacecraft (down to only a few km from the surface, flying deep within jets of gas and dust), and be the first to spend an extended period of time watching changes on the comet; it will also land a probe on the surface, to find out exactly what the comet is made of.
I will work on the data that will be returned by Rosetta, especially through the camera system OSIRIS, and also by parallel ground-based observations of the comet. Such ground-based context observations are of critical importance: While the spacecraft will return very detailed information about the nucleus and inner coma of one particular comet, we need to be able to see how these details correspond to the large-scale activity that can be observed with telescopes in order to relate this to comets in general. I am coordinating a campaign of observations from telescopes worldwide. This will include a significant contribution from amateur astronomers, and from UK schools via the Faulkes Telescope project, when the comet is bright enough. Together, these data will reveal how cometary activity works.
In addition to 67P, I will also observe other comets for comparison. These will include those of the same class, the short-period "Jupiter family" comets, and also other types such as main belt and long-period comets, including comet ISON. The interaction between the Sun and comets like ISON, which get very close to the solar surface, not only tells us about how highly active comets behave under extreme heating conditions, but can also reveal new information about the Sun itself and the environment around it. Main belt comets are at the other end of the cometary activity scale: They are a recently discovered missing link between icy comets and rocky asteroids, with asteroid-like orbits but weak comet-like activity. They are also a potential source of Earth's water: It is much easier to have delivered water from the outer asteroid belt to the early Earth than it is to account for all of it from the impact of "normal" comets.
My work will look at the differences in the activity of the three classes of comet (high-activity near-Sun comets, medium-activity Jupiter family comets, and low-activity main belt comets), and the question of whether the variation is due to the different source regions they come from, or due to the environment in which they are active now. This "nature vs. nurture" question for comets will provide clues about the properties of different areas of the planet-forming disc, and the evolution of icy bodies over the age of the solar system.
Organisations
Publications
Vaduvescu O
(2018)
280 one-opposition near-Earth asteroids recovered by the EURONEAR with the Isaac Newton Telescope
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Opitom C
(2019)
2I/Borisov: A C 2 -depleted interstellar comet
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Opitom C
(2019)
2I/Borisov: A C$_2$ depleted interstellar comet
Knight Matthew M.
(2015)
322P/SOHO 1: Sunskirting Comet or Asteroid?
in AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts #47
{Knight} M
(2015)
322P/SOHO 1: Sunskirting Comet or Asteroid?
in AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts
Henderson C
(2016)
Campaign 9 of the K2 Mission: Observational Parameters, Scientific Drivers, and Community Involvement for a Simultaneous Space- and Ground-based Microlensing Survey
in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
{Jones} G
(2015)
Castalia \mdash A Mission to a Main Belt Comet
in LPI Contributions
Bowles N
(2018)
CASTAway: An asteroid main belt tour and survey
in Advances in Space Research
Bodewits D
(2016)
CHANGES IN THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT OF THE INNER COMA OF 67P/CHURYUMOV-GERASIMENKO WITH DECREASING HELIOCENTRIC DISTANCE
in The Astronomical Journal
{B{\'e}rard} D
(2015)
Chariklo's size, shape and orientation from stellar occultations
in AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts
Knight M
(2016)
COMET 322P/SOHO 1: AN ASTEROID WITH THE SMALLEST PERIHELION DISTANCE?*
in The Astrophysical Journal Letters
{Marchant} J
(2015)
Comet 67P observations with LOTUS: a new near-UV spectrograph for the Liverpool Telescope
in AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts
Marchant Jon
(2015)
Comet 67P observations with LOTUS: a new near-UV spectrograph for the Liverpool Telescope
in AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts #47
Sierks H
(2015)
Cometary science. On the nucleus structure and activity of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
in Science (New York, N.Y.)
Thomas N
(2015)
Cometary science. The morphological diversity of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
in Science (New York, N.Y.)
Herique A
(2018)
Direct observations of asteroid interior and regolith structure: Science measurement requirements
in Advances in Space Research
Bhattacharya A
(2016)
DISCOVERY OF A GAS GIANT PLANET IN MICROLENSING EVENT OGLE-2014-BLG-1760
in The Astronomical Journal
Snodgrass C
(2016)
Distant activity of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014: Ground-based results during the Rosetta pre-landing phase
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Rotundi A
(2015)
Dust measurements in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko inbound to the Sun
in Science
Rotundi Alessandra
(2015)
Dust measurements in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko inbound to the Sun
in Science
{Fulle} M
(2015)
Dust Measurements in the Coma of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko Inbound to the Sun Between 3.7 and 3.4 AU
in Lunar and Planetary Science Conference
Fulle M.
(2015)
Dust Measurements in the Coma of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko Inbound to the Sun Between 3.7 and 3.4 AU
in 46th Annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference
Arellano Ferro A
(2016)
Erratum: A detailed census of variable stars in the globular cluster NGC 6333 (M9) from CCD differential photometry
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Kains N
(2016)
Estimating the parameters of globular cluster M 30 (NGC 7099) from time-series photometry (Corrigendum)
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Blum J
(2017)
Evidence for the formation of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko through gravitational collapse of a bound clump of pebbles
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Hansen K
(2016)
Evolution of water production of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: An empirical model and a multi-instrument study
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Figuera Jaimes R
(2016)
Exploring the crowded central region of ten Galactic globular clusters using EMCCDs Variable star searches and new discoveries???
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Rattenbury N
(2017)
Faint-source-star planetary microlensing: the discovery of the cold gas-giant planet OGLE-2014-BLG-0676Lb
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Bachelet E
(2018)
First Assessment of the Binary Lens OGLE-2015-BLG-0232
in The Astrophysical Journal
Knight M
(2017)
Gemini and Lowell observations of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko during the Rosetta mission
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
{Dominik} M
(2015)
GravityCam: ground-based wide-field high-resolution imaging and high-speed photometry
in AAS/Division for Extreme Solar Systems Abstracts
Dominik Martin
(2015)
GravityCam: ground-based wide-field high-resolution imaging and high-speed photometry
in AAS/Division for Extreme Solar Systems Abstracts
Jørgensen U
(2018)
GravityCam: higher resolution visible wide-field imaging
Mackay C
(2018)
GravityCam: Wide-field high-resolution high-cadence imaging surveys in the visible from the ground
in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
Opitom C
(2017)
Ground-based monitoring of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko gas activity throughout the Rosetta mission
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Wang T
(2017)
Ground-based Parallax Confirmed by Spitzer: Binary Microlensing Event MOA-2015-BLG-020
in The Astrophysical Journal
Southworth J
(2016)
High-precision photometry by telescope defocussing - VIII. WASP-22, WASP-41, WASP-42 and WASP-55
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Evans D
(2016)
High-resolution Imaging of Transiting Extrasolar Planetary systems (HITEP) I. Lucky imaging observations of 101 systems in the southern hemisphere???
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Evans D
(2018)
High-resolution Imaging of Transiting Extrasolar Planetary systems (HITEP) II. Lucky Imaging results from 2015 and 2016
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Hines Dean C.
(2015)
Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Polarimetry of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko Obtained During the Rosetta Mission
in AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts #47
{Hines} D
(2015)
Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Polarimetry of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko Obtained During the Rosetta Mission
in AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts
A'Hearn M. F.
(2015)
Imaging the Gas from 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
in 46th Annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference
{A'Hearn} M
(2015)
Imaging the Gas from 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
in Lunar and Planetary Science Conference
Kokotanekova R
(2018)
Implications of the small spin changes measured for large Jupiter-family comet nuclei
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Southworth J
(2015)
Larger and faster: revised properties and a shorter orbital period for the WASP-57 planetary system from a pro-am collaboration
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lister Tim
(2015)
LCOGT Network observations of spacecraft target comets
in American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #225
{Lister} T
(2015)
LCOGT Network observations of spacecraft target comets
in American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts
Steele I
(2016)
LOTUS: a low-cost, ultraviolet spectrograph
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Figuera Jaimes R
(2016)
Many new variable stars discovered in the core of the globular cluster NGC 6715 (M 54) with EMCCD observations
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Zhu (??) W
(2016)
MASS MEASUREMENTS OF ISOLATED OBJECTS FROM SPACE-BASED MICROLENSING
in The Astrophysical Journal
Related Projects
| Project Reference | Relationship | Related To | Start | End | Award Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ST/L004569/1 | 30/09/2014 | 29/09/2018 | £404,877 | ||
| ST/L004569/2 | Transfer | ST/L004569/1 | 30/09/2018 | 29/09/2019 | £74,025 |