Gregory's ServerThis is the surface of a comet! Dust is swirling around the surface of Comet 67/P -- captured in 2016 by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, processing by Jacint Roger Perez.
Still one of the most remarkable scenes in space exploration.
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33 comments
 @coreyspowell they *are* dirty snowballs, the error is that word "just”. because "dirty" might as well be a synonym for “endlessly fascinating complicated stuff that might just help us figure out how life starts”… 😀 Agreed, presentation is everything! I recall a lot of failure of imagination -- people presenting a "snowball" as a featureless blob, not thinking about how much complexity there is in nature at every level.  As Rachel Greenham pointed out here, the error wasn't in the description but in the interpretation. Dirty snowballs turn out to be really complex and cool looking.  No, that was Jacint Perez (aka Landru79) who stitched the images together. He does wonderful work -- mostly shared over on the bird site, unfortunately.  @coreyspowell I immediately imagined Kirk and Spock coming over that hill, being pursued by a guy in an incredibly cheap rock suit. It is fascinating to see though. I am anxious for more. We need more robots exploring our system. The folks at Desilu definitely could have found someone to make a Star Trek landscape like this out of styrofoam and spray paint. @coreyspowell Send in a Ukrainian cleaning lady. She'll have that sorted in 5 minutes flat. Absolute terrors.  @coreyspowell It looks like walking out on my porch here in Montana in winter! 😀 That's one of the coolest things I've ever seen... now I want to go there myself... 😍 @coreyspowell I keep expecting a dinosaur in the shadows just like Howard Hawkes’ The Thing From Another World!! #scififilms   @10tothe22 If you look carefully you can see three components: background stars, cosmic ray streaks on the detector, and comet dust catching the sunlight. @coreyspowell Phenomenal! I think we should play a Christmas track over it though. Possibly “Let it snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!” @coreyspowell That’s the difference between the Fediverse and Xitter. We get pictures of comets, they get the effluvia from Musk’s anus. @coreyspowell  I remember seeing this for the first time back then. Watching the dust passing in front of us. It was, and frankly still is, just astounding.  |
As a kid I learned that comets are just "dirty snowballs." Look at how much richer the reality is!
The Rosetta spacecraft took this amazing close-up of Comet 67/P from a distance of 20 km.
https://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/04/01/cometwatch-28-march-14-km-flyby/ #science #nature #space #astronomy