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Taking a Comet's Temperature

Oct. 1, 2015
Subsurface temperature maps of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, showing the southern hemisphere of the comet. The maps are based on observations obtained with ESA's MIRO instrument.

Subsurface temperature maps of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, showing the southern hemisphere of the comet. The maps are based on observations obtained with the Microwave Instrument for the Rosetta Obiter (MIRO) at millimeter (left) and sub-millimeter (right) wavelengths between September and October 2014. The MIRO data are projected on a digital shape model of the comet. A temperature bar (in degrees Kelvin), is to the right.

Rosetta is a European Space Agency mission with contributions from its member states and NASA. Rosetta's Philae lander is provided by a consortium led by the German Aerospace Center, Cologne; Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen; French National Space Agency, Paris; and the Italian Space Agency, Rome. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the U.S. participation in the Rosetta mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information on the U.S. instruments aboard Rosetta, visit http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov.

More information about Rosetta is available at http://www.esa.int/rosetta.

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