Churrymoon, an unexpected moon around a Tchouri comet

On August 6, 2014, the probe Rosetta and the little one robot Philae, who she wore, finally arrived at her destination: the comet 67P / Tchouryumov-Gerasimenko, nicknamed Chouri. A year later, on August 13, four years ago to the day, thestar iced was reaching the end of his orbits elliptic closest to the Sun. (the perihelion). For several weeks, the temperature measured by the European probe, which did not let it go by one foot, increased significantly, triggering degasification on greasy and sensational releases of dust … Finally, the intimate life of approx comet during his perihelion could be followed in detail. For the scientists, amazed, this two-year journey has summer and there remains an incomparable gold mine that they have not finished searching for.

To see the evolution of a comet during its race around the Sun, do not hesitate to dive 400,000 free images presented by theTHAT.

Jacint Roger, known as @ landru79 on Twitter, is very used to image banks of several space missions, especially that of Rosetta that he visits definitely looking for nuggets every day. And precisely this passion finds and manufactures in the form of animations GIFs that he shares regularly. The results are striking (look at his Animated GIFs of Tchouri, March, Saturn…). So, playing on the brightness and contrastshe reveals the comet in a new light (much brighter than usual).

One of her recent comets, created from photos taken by Rosetta's Osiris camera on October 21, 2015, when she was 400 kilometers from the center of the comet's nucleus, made sense. Surprise: There was a piece torn bigger than the others. Researchers who identified him nicknamed it "Churrymoon," the moon by Tchouri. It measured, according to them, about four feet wide and accompanied his stepmother two kilometers for 12 hours, at 2.4 to 3.9 kilometers. And it would have really disappeared from the comet's environment only on 23 October. Churrymoon is now drifting into interplanetary space, somewhere between Mars and Jupiter.