Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko: meet the discoverers of Rosetta’s comet

Rosetta's comet was discovered in 1969 by two Ukranian astronomers, Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko, who first observed it from the Institute of Astrophysics in Alma-Ata (now named Almaty), Kazakhstan. To their delight, comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was selected in 2003 as the destination for the Rosetta mission. Since then, they have eagerly followed the progress of the mission that is now unveiling the many facets of 'their' comet. Forty-five years after the discovery, Klim and Svetlana are still active researchers in the field of cometary science. They recently shared with us the story of how they stumbled on the object that would later become – as Svetlana calls it – a 'superstar among comets'. As with many tales from the history of science, this was a lucky discovery. In September 1969, the two astronomers were on an expedition to Alma-Ata to observe known comets and – hopefully – to discover new ones. Using the Institute's 50-cm telescope, they took photographs of the night sky, observing each region twice at an interval of 20-30 minutes. This is a common technique used to reveal unknown comets or transient objects in the night sky: by comparing subsequent photos of the same patch of the sky, unexpected 'visitors' appear to move across the sky against the background of the fixed stars, and can be easily identified. Those were the days of analogue photography: astronomers would coat a photographic plate with light-sensitive emulsion and expose it to the night sky to record light from astronomical sources. At the end of the observation shift, they would develop the plates and eventually, sometimes only after days or even weeks, measure the position and brightness of the celestial bodies recorded in the images and try to make sense out of them. It was because of an incident during the […]



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