CometWatch – the movie

As the incredible year of 2014 draws to a close, we have prepared a small treat for all of the readers of this blog who have followed Rosetta's progress over the months, in particular those who like to download images and play with them. We started our CometWatch in July, when Rosetta was still a few thousand kilometres away from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. We saw this curiously-shaped comet grow larger and richer in details as the spacecraft got closer and closer until rendezvous at 100 km on 6 August. The NAVCAM images released over that period provided a good overview of our approach this amazing new world. In September, as we drew closer to the comet, we had to switch to taking four-image mosaics in order to ensure that we could cover enough of it for navigation purposes. Since then, we have been publishing some of these four-image sets as montages and mosaics, as well as releasing the individual frames so that you could work with them and create your own mosaics. Some have been taken within 8 km of the surface of 67P/C-G, providing amazing views. But to mark the end of this exciting year, instead of just one new image, montage, or mosaic, the last CometWatch release of the year is ... a movie, featuring no less than 24 montages based on NAVCAM images taken between 19 November and 3 December 2014. A reduced version of the movie can be seen inline here, but the full-sized version is available if you click through. These images were taken while Rosetta was in a 30-km orbit around the comet (see this video showing the trajectory of the spacecraft after 12 November). As usual, each montage comprises four individual images taken over a 20-minute period, at either around 11:00 UT (12:00 CET) […]



from Rosetta - ESA's comet chaser » Rosetta - ESA's comet chaser http://ift.tt/1v8ztgT

via IFTTT