CometWatch 12 November – one year on

Today’s CometWatch entry was taken yesterday by Rosetta’s NAVCAM, on the anniversary of Philae’s historic landing on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko last year. The image was taken from a distance of 177.7 km; the image scale is 15.1 m/pixel and the image measures 15.5 km across. It has been lightly enhanced to better show the comet’s activity. With Rosetta closer to the comet, more surface details can be seen again. On the large lobe, to the left, the relatively flat surface of Aker can be seen to the top, with Khepry to the left and Babi in the foreground. Hints of Anhur can also just be seen beyond Aker. On the small lobe, the circular depression Hatmehit takes centre stage. Philae’s first touchdown point, Agilkia, is to the lower right of Hatmehit in this orientation, with its final landing site, Abydos, towards the horizon at the top of this view. In case you missed it yesterday, a new animation was released by the lander teams depicting Philae’s impressive flight across the surface of the comet from Agilkia to Abydos. More about the outlook for Philae – and Rosetta – in the months and year ahead can be found in our comet landing anniversary article, here. The original 1024 x 1024 pixel image of today’s Cometwatch entry is provided below:

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