Tag Archives: 67p

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Charlotte vs. The Comet 2: This Time, I Got It Right

A few weeks ago, I posted a scale comparison between comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, the city I live in. It was wildly, offensively inaccurate: somehow, I shrank the comet by a factor of five. Well, now that the ESA has finally released their shape model for the comet, I can just import the model into Blender, convert it into a .dae file, scale it until it’s (approximately) the right size, and stick it in Google Earth to get an idea of the comet’s scale.

67 P vs. Charlotte NC

The larger lobe is 4,100 meters long, and the whole comet dwarfs Charlotte. In fact, it looks like Charlotte is being menaced by a legless puppy. There’s an image for you…

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A Correction

I made a massive newbie mistake in my post comparing the size of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko to Charlotte, North Carolina. I swear I did the math, but that’s no guarantee that I did the math right. A commenter on Reddit pointed out my mistake, for which I’m grateful.

The Bank of America Corporate Center (the building that looks a little like Angkor Wat or a weird needly wedding cake at the top) is about 265 meters high. 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is about 4,000 meters long on its longest axis. Therefore, the comet should have been 15 times larger than the building.

I’m sorry about this. The offending post has been hidden in shame, and I’ll make a replacement if I can find a picture of the skyline that’ll fit the comet.

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