placed faces to stupefy , because this utterly incredible range of Comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko , taken by ESA ’s Rosetta space vehicle , should leave you fitly blown away .
What you ’re come across here is Comet 67P with the Sun almost directly behind it ; Rosetta , the comet , and the Sun are almost all in a straight line . The result is an awful glow of ignitor surrounding the comet ’s odd soma .
On the left wing is the small lobe of the comet , the emplacement of Philae’sfinal resting lieu , and on the right the larger one . The icon was taken with the space vehicle ’s NAVCAM on March 27 , 2016 , from a distance of 329 kilometer ( 204 mi ) from the comet ’s centre of attention , and spans 28.7 km ( 17.8 miles ) across .
Rosetta was capable to snap this image because it has of late been sat in a distant orbit of the comet . “ In February and March , Rosetta pass several weeks at very near distance from the comet cell nucleus , which overfilled the field of view of the NAVCAM , providing us with outstanding scene of the surface , ” ESA explain in ablog post . “ During the current outing , rather , we can enjoy again a view of the full nucleus and the environment around it . ”
Of particular interest are the increased areas of activity , the brightest regions see shooting away from the comet , as the surface sublimates in the sunlight ( that is , its trash turns directly to gas ) . This creates the larger coma , or atmosphere , that we can just about make out in the image . you may even make out the shadows of the two lobes on the coma , which is seriously telling .
closely up , the shadows produced below each lobe can be take in in greater item .
Having been 1,000 kilometer ( 620 miles ) from the comet on March 30 , Rosetta is now moving back below 200 kilometers ( 125 miles ) this week , before lowering itself to just 30 kilometers ( 19 mile ) on April 9 .
Until then , we ’ve got several calendar month of skill to search forward to , and it ’s likely that the data conglomerate by Rosetta will goad scientific investigating for many years to come .
