The southern hemisphere of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: Analysis of the preperihelion size-frequency distribution of boulders ≥7 m

Maurizio Pajola (1, 2) , Alice Lucchetti (3) , Jean-Baptiste Vincent (4) , Nilda Oklay (4) , Mohamed R. El-Maarry (5) , Ivano Bertini (2) , Giampiero Naletto (2, 6, 7) , Monica Lazzarin (8) , Matteo Massironi (9) , Holger Sierks (4) , Cesare Barbieri (2, 8) , Philippe Lamy (10) , Rafael Rodrigo (11, 12) , Detlef Koschny (13) , Hans Rickman (14, 15) , Horst U. Keller (16) , Jessica Agarwal (4) , Michael F. A'Hearn (17) , Maria A. Barucci (18) , Jean-Loup Bertaux (19) , Steve Boudreault (4) , Gabriele Cremonese (3) , Vania Da Deppo (7) , Björn Davidsson (20) , Stefano Debei (21) , Mariolino de Cecco (22) , Jakob Deller (4) , Sonia Fornasier (18) , Marco Fulle (23) , Adeline Gicquel (4) , Olivier Groussin (10) , Pedro J. Gutiérrez (24) , Carsten Güttler (4) , Marc Hofmann (4) , Sebastian Höfner (4) , Stubbe F. Hviid (25) , Wing-Huen Ip (26) , Laurent Jorda (10) , Jörg Knollenberg (25) , J.-Rainer Kramm (4) , Ekkehard Kührt (25) , Michael Küppers (27) , Fiorangela La Forgia (8) , Luisa M. Lara (24) , Jui-Chi Lee (26) , Zhong-Yi Lin (26) , Jose J. Lopez Moreno (24) , Francesco Marzari (8) , Harald Michalik (28) , Stefano Mottola (25) , Frank Preusker (25) , Frank Scholten (25) , Nicholas Thomas (5) , Imre Toth (29, 10) , Cecilia Tubiana (4)

1 ARC - NASA Ames Research Center
2 CISAS - Centro di Ateneo di Studi e Attività Spaziali “Giuseppe Colombo”
3 OAPD - INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova
4 MPS - Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung
5 Physikalisches Institut [Bern]
6 DEI - Department of Information Engineering [Padova]
7 IFN - CNR Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies
8 Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia "Galileo Galilei"
9 Dipartimento di Geoscienze [Padova]
10 LAM - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille
11 CAB - Centro de Astrobiologia [Madrid]
12 ISSI - International Space Science Institute [Bern]
13 ESTEC - European Space Research and Technology Centre
14 CBK - Space Research Centre of Polish Academy of Sciences
15 Department of Physics and Astronomy [Uppsala]
16 IGEP - Institut für Geophysik und Extraterrestrische Physik [Braunschweig]
17 Department of Astronomy [College Park]
18 LESIA - Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique
19 PLANETO - LATMOS
20 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
21 Department of Mechanical Engineering [Padova]
22 University of Trento [Trento]
23 OAT - INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste
24 IAA - Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía
25 DLR Institut für Planetenforschung
26 IANCU - Institute of Astronomy [Taiwan]
27 Operations Department (ESAC)
28 IDA - Institute of Computer and Network Engineering [Braunschweig]
29 Konkoly Observatory

We calculate the size-frequency distribution of the boulders on the southern hemisphere of comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P), which was in shadow before the end of April 2015. We compare the new results with those derived from the northern hemisphere and equatorial regions of 67P, highlighting the possible physical processes that lead to these boulder size distributions. Methods. We used images acquired by the OSIRIS Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) on 2 May 2015 at a distance of 125 km from the nucleus. The scale of this dataset is 2.3 m/px; the high resolution of the images, coupled with the favorable observation phase angle of 62◦, provided the possibility to unambiguously identify boulders ≥7 m on the surface of 67P and to manually extract them with the software ArcGIS. We derived the size-frequency distribution of the illuminated southern hemisphere. Results. We found a power-law index of −3.6 ± 0.2 for the boulders on the southern hemisphere with a diameter range of 7−35 m. The power-law index is equal to the one previously found on northern and equatorial regions of 67P, suggesting that similar boulder formation processes occur in both hemispheres. The power-law index is related to gravitational events triggered by sublimation and/or thermal fracturing causing regressive erosion. In addition, the presence of a larger number of boulders per km2 in the southern hemisphere, which is a factor of 3 higher with respect to the northern hemisphere, suggests that the southernmost terrains of 67P are affected by a stronger thermal fracturing and sublimating activity, hence possibly causing larger regressive erosion and gravitational events.

Keywords: Comets; 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Domains: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics [astro-ph.EP]

Maurizio Pajola, Alice Lucchetti, Jean-Baptiste Vincent, Nilda Oklay, Mohamed R. El-Maarry, et al.. The southern hemisphere of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: Analysis of the preperihelion size-frequency distribution of boulders ≥7 m. Astronomy and Astrophysics - A&A, 2016, 592, pp.L2. ⟨10.1051/0004-6361/201628887⟩. ⟨insu-01353704⟩