To find dragons, search in deep, dark caves ๐Ÿ‰

Was looking through the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko image archives ahead of the tenth anniversary of the landing Philae probe landing on 12 November โ˜„๏ธ๐Ÿ›ฐ๏ธ

Discovered this nice wide & narrow-angle pair from 22 May 2016 from 6.3km, centred on the 220m wide, 185m deep Seth_01 pit ๐Ÿ“ท

Zoom in, crank up the brightness, & look at that lovely scaly texture ๐Ÿฒ๐Ÿ™‚๐Ÿ‘

Credit: ESA, Rosetta, MPS for OSIRIS team, Mark McCaughrean

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#RosettaLegacy
#SpaceScience

There are many such pits on the surface of Comet 67P/C-G, but they're not due to external impacts.

Rather, they're akin to sinkholes, where volatile material inside the comet, close to the dusty surface is heated & escapes into space, leaving a large void underneath which can then collapse.

https://sci.esa.int/web/rosetta/-/56121-comet-pit-formation

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ESA Science & Technology - Comet pit formation

Comet pit formation

The pits were found to be active, with jets of material coming out of them.

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Rosetta/Comet_sinkholes_generate_jets

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Comet sinkholes generate jets

A number of the dust jets emerging from Rosettaโ€™s comet can be traced back to active pits that were likely formed by a sudden collapse of the surface. These โ€˜sinkholesโ€™ are providing a glimpse at the chaotic and diverse interior of the comet.

And the interiors of some of the pits were seen to have a peculiar semi-regular texture, with lumps & bumps about 3 metres in size.

Similar structures were found in exposed locations elsewhere on the comet & were christened "goosebumps".

The theory was that these were perhaps the characteristic-sized primordial lumps of material that agglomerated to form the comet in the first place, billions of years ago.

https://sci.esa.int/web/rosetta/-/55305-comet-goosebumps

https://sci.esa.int/web/rosetta/-/55295-getting-to-know-rosetta-s-comet

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ESA Science & Technology - Comet goosebumps

Comet goosebumps

However, later work looking at the wider array of structures & fractures on the network emphasised the importance of thermal processing on material with water in it, as Comet 67P/C-G has plenty of.

In this model, a kind of freeze-thaw [edit: badly worded: a thermal expansion & contraction of a solid โ€“ no liquid phase] cycle takes place, causing material to crack & fracture on characteristic length scales.

Similar structures are well-known on Earth & Mars.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2015GL064500

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Work was done by Atree et al. a couple of years after the Rosetta mission ended on figuring out how this thermal fracturing process would work in detail on comets like 67P/C-G.

https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2018/02/aa31937-17/aa31937-17.html

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@markmccaughrean it is I, Attree et al!
Nice thread Mark, I was just digging out the reference to that paper to reply, but you already posted it :)

@nick_attree Ah ha โ€“ excellent, Nick ๐Ÿ™‚

I was surprised when I dug into the OSIRIS images yesterday โ€“ I don't think I've seen many if any images that show the polygons this clearly& from this close up.

@markmccaughrean yes, that is a really nice one! I should spend some time looking back at the OSIRIS archive!
I would also like to revisit this topic as I don't think we really understand thermal stresses and the polygons yet. The materials properties are all so unconstrained though!
@nick_attree Well, if the topic is still open & this image is useful to advancing things, I'm certainly available for any sort of collaboration. I mean, I may be an astronomer rather than a planetary scientist, but it feels like I've spent enough time with Rosetta over the years to finally do some science with it too ๐Ÿคช
@markmccaughrean. Certainly still open, but I'm not sure how to proceed at the moment! If I think of any good ideas requiring help with the images, I'll let you know!
By the way, I think there is a citizen science zooniverse project to use the images to look for surface changes that you might be interested in