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Lumpy, bumpy, fluffy and layered: a picture of Rosetta's target comet builds up

Written by Everything Science

Aug 20, 2007 at 12:00 AM

Observational and theoretical studies of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the target of ESA’s Rosetta mission, are building a detailed portrait of the comet’s nucleus as it travels around the Sun.

Comet nuclei are considered the most pristine bodies in the Solar System.
Consequently, studies of comet nuclei shed an essential light on the processes occurring in the very initial stages of the Solar System formation and on the role they could have played for the origin of life on Earth.

Observations of the comet using the 8.2 m-ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) show an irregularly-shaped object that is about 4.6 kilometres in diameter with a rotational period of 12 hours 49 minutes. Ms Cecilia Tubiana, who will be presenting results at the second European Planetary Science Congress
(EPSC) in Potsdam on Tuesday 21st August, said, “These observations were taken when the comet was approaching the furthest point from the Sun in its orbit. Rosetta will rendezvous with the comet in 2014 at a distance of about 600 million kilometres from the Sun. While a quite detailed portrait of the comet at small heliocentric distance has been drawn, a profound description of Rosetta’s target comet at large heliocentric distance is missing.”

A team of scientists, led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, observed the comet’s nucleus in June 2004, May and August 2006 and July 2007, when the comet was at least 680 million kilometres from the Sun.
Surprisingly, although the comet was not active, they found that a faint dust trail is visible in the images of the comet, extending more than 500 000 km along the comet’s orbital path. Ms Tubiana said, “We believe that this dust trail is composed of large grains that the comet shed over the
many times it has travelled along this path.

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Everything Biology

Written by Everything Science

Aug 19, 2007 at 12:00 AM

Professor Monty Priede, Director of the University’s highly-acclaimed Oceanlab, along with colleague Dr Nicola King, and students Jessica Craig, Claudia Alt and James Hawkins, are part of the science team on board the ship.

The jewelled squid, Histioteuthis, from 200-500m. Copyright David Shale, 2007.

Professor Priede said: “It is like surveying a new continent half way between America and Europe. We can recognise the creatures, but familiar ones are absent and unusual ones are common. We are finding species that are rare or unknown elsewhere in the world.”

One of the world’s most advanced research vessels, the RRS James Cook, will be docking at Fairlie Pier by Largs tomorrow (Saturday, August 18), bringing samples of rare animals and a vast archive of pictures and videos, which will help us to understand more about life in the oceans.

The RRS James Cook is the latest addition to the Natural Environment Research Council’s fleet of oceanographic research ships.

The team of scientists mapped over 1,500 square miles, exploring the deep sea creatures living in the depths of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. They used the latest technology to learn more about what is living in this remote and relatively unexplored deep-sea environment using remotely operated vehicles equipped with digital cameras.

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Everything Space

Written by Everything Science

Jul 15, 2007 at 12:00 AM

Researchers at UCL (University College London) are part of an international team which has discovered water on an extra-solar planet for the first time. Findings will be published in this week’s Nature (July 12).

An artist’s impression of HD 189733b and its star (credit: ESA - C. Carreau)

‘Extra-solar’ planets are those outside our Solar System and more than 200 have been discovered orbiting stars close to our own Sun. The planet with water in its atmosphere is known as HD 189733b, and orbits a star in the constellation of Vulpecula the Fox, which is 64 light years from the Sun. HD 189733b is known as a “transiting planet” because it passes directly in front of its star, as viewed from the Earth.

The researchers, led by Dr Giovanna Tinetti of the European Space Agency and UCL’s Department of Physics & Astronomy, found that as HD 189733b passes in front of its ‘sun’, it absorbs starlight in a way that can only be explained by the presence of water vapour in its atmosphere. This is the first time that astronomers have been able to confirm that water is present on an extra-solar planet.

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Everything Space

Written by Everything Science

Apr 25, 2007 at 12:00 AM

Astronomers have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, an exoplanet with a radius only 50% larger than the Earth and capable of having liquid water. Using the ESO 3.6-m telescope, a team of Swiss, French and Portuguese scientists discovered a super-Earth about 5 times the mass of the Earth that orbits a red dwarf, already known to harbour a Neptune-mass planet. The astronomers have also strong evidence for the presence of a third planet with a mass about 8 Earth masses.

Artist's impression of the planetary system around the red dwarf Gliese 581. Using the instrument HARPS on the ESO 3.6-m telescope, astronomers have uncovered 3 planets, all of relative low-mass: 5, 8 and 15 Earth masses. The five Earth-mass planet makes a full orbit around the star in 13 days, the other two in 5 and 84 days. (c) ESO

This exoplanet - as astronomers call planets around a star other than the Sun – is the smallest ever found up to now [1] and it completes a full orbit in 13 days. It is 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is from the Sun. However, given that its host star, the red dwarf Gliese 581 [2], is smaller and colder than the Sun – and thus less luminous – the planet nevertheless lies in the habitable zone, the region around a star where water could be liquid!

“We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid,” explains Stéphane Udry, from the Geneva Observatory (Switzerland) and lead-author of the paper reporting the result. “Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth’s radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky – like our Earth – or covered with oceans,” he adds.

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