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originally posted by: wildespace
Rosetta space probe dipped to a mere 6 kilometers from the surface of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Feb. 14, 2015. When it did, it saw something remarkable: Its own shadow on the surface of the comet!
Full-sized image: blogs.esa.int...
The shadow is that elongated blurry shape at the bottom of the image.
The image is at the remarkable 11 cm/pixel, I think the highest ever achieved by a spacecraft orbiting around a Solar System body.
Phil Plait's blog gives more details: www.slate.com...
ESA blog with even more information and images: blogs.esa.int...
All I can say is - wow!
originally posted by: wildespace
All I can say is - wow!
Thanks for the interesting topic!
originally posted by: wildespace
Rosetta space probe dipped to a mere 6 kilometers from the surface of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko...
ESA blog with even more information and images: blogs.esa.int...
If you were standing on the surface with Rosetta high above you, there would be no place in the shadow where the entire Sun would be blocked from view, which explains why there is no fully dark core to the shadow.
originally posted by: Arbitrageur
I'm surprised the shadow is as visible as it is, since 6km is pretty far away and as the article mentions:
If you were standing on the surface with Rosetta high above you, there would be no place in the shadow where the entire Sun would be blocked from view, which explains why there is no fully dark core to the shadow.
originally posted by: InverseLookingGlass
a reply to: wildespace
Where are the gas jets from the sub-surface ice? Shouldn't those or evidence of that dynamic be showing? /sarc off.
Keep in mind the true color is darker than coal and the density is less than liquid water....
I'll disclose my leading theory again for the record... it's pumice with volatile gas in the bubbles. Like a piece of molten silicate rock that cooled very quickly. The rock electrically erodes and frees the gas. Stay tuned and shred my hypothesis if it's proved wrong.
Another interesting result based on these infrared observations concerns the discovery of macromolecular organic compounds over the entire surface of the comet's nucleus. Some of these compounds are similar to the carboxylic acids – or actually to polymers of carboxylic acids – that are present in amino acids.
While amino acids were already observed in cometary materials and in primordial meteorites, this is the first time that such compounds are directly observed on the surface of a comet nucleus. In addition, the global distribution of such compounds on the surface suggests that they were abundant in the material that assembled to build up the nucleus of the comet.
“The formation of such compounds requires the presence of ices of volatile molecules such as methanol, methane or carbon monoxide, which only freeze at very low temperatures,” explains Capaccioni. “Therefore, these compounds must have formed at large distances from the Sun, during the early stages of the build up of the Solar System. This suggests that we are facing a comet that locks up, in its interior, traces of primordial chemical compounds that date back to the formation of our Solar System, or possibly to an even earlier epoch.”
blogs.esa.int...
As reported previously in this blog, even though the comet is still more than 400 million kilometres from the Sun, the mixture of molecules detected in the comet’s coma is surprisingly rich already. Before arriving at 67P/C-G, the ROSINA team thought that at these vast distances from the Sun, its relatively low intensity would only release the most volatile molecules via sublimation, namely carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
However, ROSINA has detected many more molecules. Indeed, as of our 11 September report, ROSINA’s inventory of detected gases 67P/C-G looked like this:
Water (H2O)
Carbon monoxide (CO)
Carbon dioxide (CO2)
Ammonia (NH3)
Methane (CH4)
Methanol (CH3OH)
But today we can report that the following have also been detected:
Formaldehyde (CH2O)
Hydrogen sulphide (H2S)
Hydrogen cyanide (HCN)
Sulphur dioxide (SO2)
Carbon disulphide (CS2)
blogs.esa.int...
Like hitting a bullet with a bullet at 1,000,000,000 miles, at least to me.
originally posted by: Astyanax
Like hitting a bullet with a bullet at 1,000,000,000 miles, at least to me.
I don't think anybody was aiming. It was an accident, a very lucky one.
All I can say is - wow!
You're joking right? I actually can't tell when some people are.
originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: AgentSmith
You're joking right? I actually can't tell when some people are.
No, not joking. I am respectfully aware of what incredible feats of navigational accuracy are involved in getting any spacecraft anywhere, and particularly on this voyage. I mean the photo was probably an accident; Rosetta wasn't actually aiming to take a shadow selfie, it was just making a photographic survey of the comet.