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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Churyumov-Gerasimenko: Activity January 31 - March 25, 2015

Churyumov-Gerasimenko: Activity January 31 - March 25, 2015
Churyumov-Gerasimenko: Activity January 31 - March 25, 2015 The comet was traveling toward its August 13, 2015 perihelion. As the comet’s surface layers are gently warmed, frozen ices sublimate. The escaping gas carries streams of dust out into space, and together these slowly expand to create the comet’s fuzzy atmosphere, or coma. As the comet continues to move closer to the Sun, the warming continues and activity rises, and pressure from the solar wind causes some of the materials to stream out into long tails, one made of gas, the other of dust. The comet’s coma will eventually span tens of thousands of kilometres, while the tails may extend hundreds of thousands of kilometres, and both will be visible through large telescopes on Earth. ESA / Rosetta / NavCam