Rosetta spacecraft has sent a image of his own shadow on Comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko , which was captured by one their instruments on 14 February, when he was just 6 kilometers from the comet.
The picture with a resolution of 11 centimeters per pixel, covers an area of 228 x 228 meters of the comet and was Osiris instrument taken by two cameras , built in Rosetta, whose shadow covers approximately an area of 20 x 50 square meters, reported the Max Planck Institute.
February 14 was the day the ship was closest to the comet, in the region of Imhotep, located in the larger of the two lobes of the comet. Currently, Rosetta is located about 80 miles away .
The snapshot shows the contrasts terrain comet containing rough surfaces and fractured with other plain and covered terrain dust, and areas with boulders ranging in size from a few meters to a few tens of meters.
During the flight, Rosetta not only passed the closest so far has been a comet, but for a short time, the Sun, the spacecraft and the comet were almost perfectly aligned.
“The images taken from that point of view have great scientific value” as Holger Sierks, the principal investigator of Osiris, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, based in Munich (Germany).
With no shadows on the comet, except for Rosetta, is possible to distinguish the properties of surface reflection. “Such views are key to the study of the size of grains of soil,” he added Sierks.
The shadow of Rosetta seen in the photograph has a slightly fuzzy rectangular shape with a size much greater than the actual ship.
In the shadow image measures about 20 x 50 meters, when in fact, the ship has a size of 2 x 32 meters . (See infographic So is equipped spacecraft Rosetta).
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