Selfie with Comet
October 15, 2014 9:42 AM   Subscribe

The Rosetta Mission to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko took this picture of itself with the comet 16km away in the background. European Space Agency description of the image. Phil Platt's Bad Astronomy story.
posted by benito.strauss (38 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
It looks so much like a cover from Analog magazine from the 60s that it took me a while to believe that it was real.

Also, I learned that '67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko' is not a valid MetaFilter tag.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:44 AM on October 15, 2014 [9 favorites]


Also also, extra bonus image of Mars's moon Phobos that I stumbled across looking for links for this post. And now I'm done thread-sitting.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:46 AM on October 15, 2014 [6 favorites]


Umm . . . please don't be done thread-sitting. The two photos together made my day.
Gimme another and make my week!
posted by Seamus at 9:48 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


The photos make you realize just how the world as you see it is possible only through the diffusion of light thanks to the gases in the atmosphere. The hard shadows and extreme bloom make the images look almost computer generated since most computer generated images also struggle to simulate the diffusion of light through the atmosphere.
posted by Talez at 9:54 AM on October 15, 2014 [7 favorites]


We're going to land on a freaking comet, a pristine piece of the original solar system. That's amazing.

Goes well with "Mars is the only known planet inhabited solely by robots" image that made the rounds.
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:02 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


Photos like this make me ecstatic to be alive right now. What an amazing picture! It has immediately earned a spot on my favorite photos of all time list, currently topped by this one, which is something I really never thought I'd see in my lifetime.
posted by LooseFilter at 10:04 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm holding out for the first extra-solar planet surface features before I seriously lose my cool.
posted by Devonian at 10:11 AM on October 15, 2014


That picture of Phobos is beautiful. Just a big rock ol' floating over Mars as seen by a robot.

Humanity can be pretty cool sometimes.
posted by bondcliff at 10:14 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


The shape of that thing is really odd. One end has a big crater, and there are grooves extending away from it. Here's an idea:

It was originally two rocks, which drifted together slowly and impacted. One of them was spinning a bit; the big crater is the original impact point, and the grooves were caused by friction slowing it down and stopping it, half a revolution later.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:14 AM on October 15, 2014


ROBOTS ARE WAY COOLER. SILLY HUMAN.
posted by smidgen at 10:14 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


I love this photo.
posted by doctornemo at 10:20 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


That's some stellar photography.
posted by dazed_one at 10:21 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


LooseFilter, what is that photo?
posted by zennie at 10:27 AM on October 15, 2014


They are 478 million km away. Rosetta was launched in March of 2004, and on November 11th the Philae* lander will descend and FIRE HARPOONS to hook itself to the comet.


*From the linked site: "Philae is named after the island in the river Nile on which an obelisk was found that had a bilingual inscription including the names of Cleopatra and Ptolemy in Egyptian hieroglyphs. This provided the French historian Jean-Francois Champollion with the final clues that enabled him to decipher the hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone and unlock the secrets of the civilisation of ancient Egypt."
posted by now i'm piste at 10:27 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


zennie, it's a Martian sunset.

...I guessed a Martian dawn, but I had to know, too.
posted by sukeban at 10:34 AM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]


Let's just hope that the Rosetta had a thorough decontamination before heading out lest we populate the comet with our cooties. There are bacterial spores on earth that are pretty resistant to UV light and would possibly be able to survive such a journey.
posted by waving at 10:43 AM on October 15, 2014


It looks so much like a cover from Analog magazine from the 60s that it took me a while to believe that it was real.

Hey, that's exactly what it looks like. It's got the exaggerated foreground/background images, the hyper-reflective low-angle lighting, the greebles on the spacecraft, the gratuitous gas jetting in the background. It's got it all.
posted by JackFlash at 10:49 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


*From the linked site: "Philae is named after the island in the river Nile on which an obelisk was found that had a bilingual inscription including the names of Cleopatra and Ptolemy in Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The obelisk is now sitting in a garden in England that anyone can visit.
posted by vacapinta at 10:56 AM on October 15, 2014


> Let's just hope that the Rosetta had a thorough decontamination before heading out lest we populate the comet with our cooties. There are bacterial spores on earth that are pretty resistant to UV light and would possibly be able to survive such a journey.

I know it would throw off our astrobiological research, but I kind of feel that any bug that can survive the trip has earned the right to live on that comet.
posted by benito.strauss at 11:06 AM on October 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


In-fucking-credible. Thank you for this!
posted by mondo dentro at 11:13 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


a pristine piece of the original solar system.

Pristine? There are craters all over it. What a mess.

Also also, extra bonus image of Mars's moon Phobos

And you call that a moon? It's a tiny little rock. Pathetic. Earth's moon #1 best moon.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:16 AM on October 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


I dunno, Io is pretty cool. And Ganymede.
posted by Justinian at 11:19 AM on October 15, 2014


Earth's moon #1 best moon.

Actually that would be Ganymede. Earth's moon would be #5.
posted by bondcliff at 11:28 AM on October 15, 2014


Drinky Die: "Earth's moon #1 best moon."

I also came to post some moon jingoism. Our moon is the best. Other moons suck!

LU-NA! LU-NA! LU-NA!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:35 AM on October 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'm sorry I didn't get in before the edit window, but please read my last comment using your best Comic Book Guy voice.
posted by bondcliff at 11:37 AM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]


> That picture of Phobos is beautiful. Just a big rock ol' floating over Mars as seen by a robot.

That was my first thought too. My second thought was "Who ordered the baked potato?".
posted by benito.strauss at 11:38 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


...What's encomenation?
posted by KChasm at 12:00 PM on October 15, 2014


What's causing the "streams of dust and gas extending away from the surface" in that selfie picture? I first thought it could be from solar wind but it is distinctly pointing toward the light source in the image.
posted by rocket88 at 12:11 PM on October 15, 2014


> What's encomenation?

Phil Platt likes to invent words to use in place of "enlarge" that include the name of the object pictured, like ensaturnate, enselenate, ensolenate, etc., so encomenate = make the comet bigger.

And Seamus, I'm afraid I can't make your week, but if you visit Platt's Bad Astronomy blog daily, he's really good at finding and featuring excellent astrophotography, about two or three times per week. That's where I saw this, and while I don't particularly care about the Skeptic Community stuff that makes up 50% of his posts, it's worth it for images like this.
posted by benito.strauss at 12:22 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


Earth's moon #1 best moon.

North moon is best moon.
posted by Talez at 12:33 PM on October 15, 2014


Phil Platt likes to invent words to use in place of "enlarge" that include the name of the object pictured, like ensaturnate, enselenate, ensolenate, etc., so encomenate = make the comet bigger.

"Embiggen" is a perfectly cromulent word.
posted by Gelatin at 1:00 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


Drinky Die: "And you call that a moon? It's a tiny little rock. Pathetic. Earth's moon #1 best moon."

I have good news for you - Phobos is on its deathbed.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:22 PM on October 15, 2014


Ok, if we're sharing cool photos, you have to see this one:

We have a spacecraft in orbit around Mars. A different planet!

We're sending another robot to explore the surface!

The robot is going to use a parachute to brake after its interplanetary flight, and then land on a skycrane!

Ok, we reoriented the orbiter and pointed its camera so that it could catch the rover as it came in to land!

That's even better than a robot selfie - it's robots taking action photos of other robots.
posted by RedOrGreen at 1:29 PM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]


Best comet photobomb I've seen in a while.
posted by waving at 2:02 PM on October 15, 2014


waving: I would expect so - if it's contaminated by earth stuff, that makes it much more likely to send back bad data.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:47 PM on October 15, 2014


Haha. LooseFilter. I feel the same way about Opportunity Catches its Shadow on Sol 180. This is one of my all time favorite man made object in space type photos. The other type being photo of space objects which, of course (^_^), is topped by nearly every photo from the Cassini Solstice Mission.

That said, this probe's selfie looks like Raymond Loewy's idea of space, while Opportunity reminds me of Syd Mead's auto designs.
posted by xtian at 5:35 AM on October 16, 2014


Really cool high-res images of the approach from the last week:

October 17, 7.9km from comet's surface

October 18, 7.8km from surface.

October 20, 7.4km from surface.

For excitement, embiggen.
posted by postcommunism at 10:02 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


The comet has dunes!
posted by exogenous at 1:53 PM on October 24, 2014


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