Check Out This Huge Rock On The Surface Of Rosetta’s Comet!

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Check Out This Huge Rock On The Surface Of Rosetta’s Comet!

Check Out This Huge Rock On The Surface Of Rosetta’s Comet!:

A close-up of a boulder nicknamed “Cheops” on the surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Image taken by the Rosetta spacecraft. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

As the Rosetta spacecraft drops a bit closer to its target comet, some really cool features are popping into view. For example, look at this picture of a 150-foot (45-meter) rock on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which was taken in September and released today (Oct. 9). And it’s led to the decision to have an Egyptian theme to naming features on the comet.

“It stands out among a group of boulders in the smooth region located on the lower side of 67P/C-G’s larger lobe,” ESA stated in a release. “This cluster of boulders reminded scientists of the famous pyramids at Giza near Cairo in Egypt, and thus it has been named Cheops for the largest of those pyramids, the Great Pyramid, which was built as a tomb for the pharaoh Cheops (also known as Kheops or Khufu) around 2550 BC.”

Scientists are still trying to figure out what the boulders are made of, and how they are formed, as the spacecraft moves into a “close observation phase” tomorrow (Oct. 10) where it is only 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from the surface.

A wider field of view of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on the larger lobe, where the boulder Cheops is located. This picture was taken by the Rosetta spacecraft shortly after its arrival in August. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

Meanwhile, some new results are coming from an asteroid that the spacecraft whizzed by a couple of years ago. In the picture below, you can see evidence of a crater that Rosetta didn’t even see!

The grooves you see there on Lutetia (which Rosetta imaged in 2010) hint at shock waves from various craters, including one that was likely on the hidden side of the asteroid relative to Rosetta as it flew by. The suspected crater is called “Suspicio.” While craters have been found in other asteroids visited by spacecraft, grooves are rarer.

“The way in which grooves are formed on these bodies is still widely debated, but it likely involves impacts,” ESA stated. “Shock waves from the impact travel through the interior of a small, porous body and fracture the surface to form the grooves.”

A paper on the research will be published in Planetary and Space Science this month, led by Sebastien Besse, a research fellow at ESA’s Technical Centre. For more information, check out this release from ESA.

A part of asteroid Lutetia imaged by the Rosetta spacecraft in 2010. The grooves you see are colored according to the crater scientists believe it’s associated with. The blue lines are from a suspected, unseen crater called “Suspicio”. Red is associated with the known crater Massilia and purple for the North Pole Crater Cluster. Yellow is unassociated with craters considered in this study. Credit: Data: Besse et al (2014); image: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

About Elizabeth Howell

Elizabeth Howell is the senior writer at Universe Today. She also works for Space.com, Space Exploration Network, the NASA Lunar Science Institute, NASA Astrobiology Magazine and LiveScience, among others. Career highlights include watching three shuttle launches, and going on a two-week simulated Mars expedition in rural Utah. You can follow her on Twitter @howellspace or contact her at her website.

Tagged as: Asteroid Lutetia, Comet 67P/Churymov-Gerasimenko

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Sunday, October 12, 2014