Rosetta Image Makes You Feel Like You're on the Surface of a Comet

By Ryan F. Mandelbaum on 06 Aug 2018 at 4:00PM

The Rosetta orbiter ended its mission in September 2016, but science fans continue to unearth and reprocess some of its incredible images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Check out this one, above.

Header image: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA – CC BY SA 4.0; acknowledgement: S Atkinson.

Amateur astronomer Stuart Atkinson cropped and processed this image from the European Space Agency’s archive to make it feel as though you’re standing right on the comet’s surface. He began with a raw image, below, of the comet’s “Bes” region, which the Rosetta spacecraft photographed with its OSIRIS camera on 10 February 2016.



Image: ESA

Rosetta took thousands of images of duck-shaped 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko while it gathered data. Only a few have been cleaned up to look nice for the public, but you can find plenty of awesome shots via the ESA image archive.

More:
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/08/rosetta-image-makes-you-feel-like-youre-on-the-surface-of-a-comet/