A new shape model of the bilobate comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Abstract

In this article, we performed the stereo-photogrammetric processing on over 5200 Rosetta/OSIRIS-NAC images to derive a global high-resolution 3D model of the bilobate comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is visually richer and more convincing than the existing models (i.e., SPG-SHAP4S, SPC-SHAP5 and SPG-SHAP7). This shape model was used to generate new measurements of the volume (18.62 ± 0.02 km³), the mean density (536.1 ± 0.7 kg/m³), and the surface area (54.0 ± 0.1 km²) of the 67P/C-G comet. Moreover, we also analyzed the reasons for the differences between the three models, namely the coverage of the image set and shadows.