How to Simulate the Surface of a Cometary Nucleus for Public Science Demonstrations

Jean-Baptiste Renard (1) , Anny Chantal Levasseur-Regourd (2) , Sylvain Lefavrais (3)

1 LPC2E - Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement et de l'Espace
2 PLANETO - LATMOS
3 Palais de la Découverte

To celebrate and appropriately illustrate the rendezvous of the European Rosetta spacecraft with comet 67P/Churyumov– Gerasimenko and the landing of Philae on the surface of the comet’s nucleus on 12 November 2014, the French science museum Palais de la Découverte developed and presented a new and original demonstration. The experiment simulates the behaviour of a cometary surface in a vacuum and shows the formation of jet-like features. We explain here how to prepare an analogue to cometary material from porous ices and carbon, how to approximately reproduce the cometary environment at low pressure, temperature and solar illumination, and how to present the experiment at a public science demonstration.

Keywords: Comet activity; Rosetta mission; public exhibitions; experiment; comet analogue; interactive exhibitions

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

Jean-Baptiste Renard, Anny Chantal Levasseur-Regourd, Sylvain Lefavrais. How to Simulate the Surface of a Cometary Nucleus for Public Science Demonstrations. Communicating astronomy with the public journal, 2016, 20, pp.30-34. ⟨insu-01367985⟩