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back to article I'll get my coat – there's a dusty one flying off Comet 67P

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is shedding four years worth of accumulated dust as it hurtles towards the Sun, say scientists after studying the output of the Rosetta spacecraft's COmetary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser, aka COSIMA. A gaggle of astroboffins have penned a letter titled “Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko sheds dust …

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  1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

    Interesting stuff

    Nice to see more data come from Rosetta. It will be interestig to see if and how the composition of dust particles changes as the comet becomes more active near the sun. Also looking forward to Philae waking up again as it approaches the sun.

    6 0 Reply
  2. Jonathan Richards 1

    Not so close, really

    I've mentioned before that 67P isn't going to get close to the sun, for values of close which mean much to humans. It won't get as close to the sun as you, dear Reader, are at this moment. Perihelion distance of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is 1.243 AU. However there seems to be this abiding idea that it is going to plunge Sunwards and skim the photosphere, or something. It ain't.

    Ref: ESA.int

    2 0 Reply
    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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      Joke

      Re: Not so close, really

      True, but then we might think it's a long way to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen....

      ;-)

      2 0 Reply
    2. imanidiot Silver badge
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      Re: Not so close, really

      Maybe so, but compared to it aphelion It's still much closer than it was.

      0 0 Reply
  3. frank ly

    "A gaggle of astroboffins ... "

    Shouldn't that be a constellation of astroboffins?

    6 0 Reply
    1. Tom_
      Reply Icon

      Re: "A gaggle of astroboffins ... "

      Maybe it should be a cluster of astroboffins.

      1 0 Reply
      1. Tikimon
        Reply Icon
        Joke

        Re: "A gaggle of astroboffins ... "

        Well, if they're the usual bunch of old crows, can we say "a murder of astroboffins"?

        OK, please nobody report me for making terrorist threats for using the word "murder" in a sentence including humans? I have a ton of patching and updates lined up, and those FBI interrogations really derail a workday.

        1 0 Reply
        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
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          Big Brother

          Re: "A gaggle of astroboffins ... "

          "So. I hear you made threats against the FBI on the Interwebs?"

          1 0 Reply
        2. Alan Brown Silver badge
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          Re: "A gaggle of astroboffins ... "

          More like a sulk of them, if they don't get their data.

          0 0 Reply
  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    pshaw ! I'd take these results with a pinch of salt

    0 0 Reply

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