Rendezvous day has finally arrived and Rosetta is about to meet Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. We’re going to hear this name quite a few times today, but what does it mean? And most importantly, how shall we pronounce it?

Rosetta’s destination comet was named after Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko, the two Ukrainian astronomers who discovered it in 1969. The 67P in the name means that it’s the 67-th periodic comet to have been discovered in history.

As for the pronunciation, we asked Irina Vavilova, an astronomer from the Main Astronomical Observatory of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, to record a sound bite with the name Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

You can listen to the file here and practice with us until Rosetta arrives at her comet.