what was that??

This comet produced a strange phenomenon that caught astronomers off guard.  How many people even knew about this?  This was very unexpected and very cool:

You’re witnessing the most dramatic outburst ever recorded at 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the Rosetta spacecraft. The brilliant plume of gas and dust erupted on July 29 just two weeks before perihelion.

In a remarkable display of how quickly conditions on a comet can change, the outburst lasted only about 18 minutes, but its effects reverberated for days.

In a sequence of images taken by Rosetta’s scientific camera OSIRIS, the brilliant, well-defined jet erupts from the side of the comet’s neck in the Anuket region. It was first seen in a photo taken at 8:24 a.m. CDT, but not in one taken 18 minutes earlier, and had faded significantly in an image captured 18 minutes later. The camera team estimates the material in the jet was traveling at a minimum of 22 mph (10 meters/sec), but possibly much faster.

This particular comet is not often discussed and astronomers were lucky to have had their equipment in the right position.  It goes to tshow you as mentioned how fast things can change with comets.

Let’s find out more on what happened on the next page

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