67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

S. I. Gerasimenko

Tschurjumow -Gerasimenko (official name: 67P/Tschurjumow-Gerasimenko ) is a short- period comet. The March 2, launched in 2004 by ESA probe Rosetta will reach the heavenly bodies in May 2014 as planned and accompany him during his active phase together with its perihelion passage. If provided for in the November 2014 landing of the Philae lander succeeds, would Tschurjumow -Gerasimenko the first comet landed on a man-made object.

Discovery

The comet was discovered in 1969 at the Institute of Astrophysics of Alma- Ata of Klim Tschurjumow when he examined a photographic plate of the comet Comas Solà, which was exposed by Svetlana Gerasimenko on September 11, 1969. He found the edge of the plate a comet -like object and assumed that it constitutes Comas Solà. After his return to Kiev all photo plates were examined closely. On October 22, it was discovered that the object could not be the comet in question, since its position by more than 1.8 ° deviated from the expected. A closer examination revealed a faint image of Comas Solà in the right place, proving that the recognized object of Tschurjumow was a newly discovered comet.

Orbit

The orbit of Tschurjumow -Gerasimenko has a checkered history. As with many other originally longer period comets his train was approaching one of the major planets - disturbed - Jupiter here. He was "captured" and thus a short-period comets and a member of the Jupiter family. According to calculations, it was after this capture before 1840 completely impossible to watch it: Even at perihelion its distance was about 4 AE. At that distance, the solar radiation is too low to justify a coma or a tail could form around the small comet nucleus. After changing Jupiter by its gravity, the orbit of the comet again so that its distance at perihelion initially about 3 AE was. Later, in 1959, it brought a new approach to Jupiter on its current orbit. Its perihelion distance is around 1.3 AE today.

Observation with Hubble

In preparation for the Rosetta mission, the comet was observed on 12 March 2003 with the Hubble Space Telescope. From the images a three-dimensional model of the comet could be calculated. The size of the core was determined to be about 5 km × 3 km, its rotation period to around 12 hours.