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OATS-DAUT SEMINAR
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Speaker: Marco Fulle (INAF-OATs)

Title: Comets

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Abstract:
ESA probe Rosetta will reach its target, short-period comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, in 2013, and will be the first spacecraft orbiting around a comet nucleus to monitor its evolution during the approach to perihelion (Aug 2015). Many spacecrafts have already visited other short-period comets, and will probably visit others before 2013, but all during fast flybys lasting few hours. Therefore, almost nothing is known of the complete 3D shape of the imaged nuclei, of how the gas and dust environment are coupled to the nucleus surface, and how they evolve on time-scales longer than hours. Although it is impossible to image from the Earth comet nuclei, ground-based observations only allow us to monitor the time evolution of cometary activity, which is crucial to plan space missions. Here we focus on the best available models providing the time-evolution of the dust environment, probably the most ill-defined topic of cometary science.
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