CometWatch 10 April

After a far excursion to explore the tail of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Rosetta is now back to closer distances from the comet nucleus. This week's CometWatch image was obtained with Rosetta's NAVCAM at 01:39 UTC on 10 April 2016, 31.4 km away. On the night between 9 and 10 April 2016, the spacecraft performed a special flyby, 30 km from the nucleus and with a phase angle very close to zero degrees. The phase angle is measured between the direction of the sunlight illuminating the nucleus and that of the light reflected by the nucleus and caught by Rosetta. A near-zero phase angle means that these two directions are very close to one another, which happens when the spacecraft is flying exactly between the Sun and the comet. In this configuration, Rosetta could see the sunlight hitting the nucleus at right angles, and therefore observed very little shadows on the surface. The CometWatch image was taken shortly after the closest approach on this flyby, at a phase angle of 11.7 degrees. The image shows mostly the small comet lobe and 'neck' region, with the smooth and bouldered terrains of Hapi, along the comet's neck, visible in the top right corner. A hint of the large lobe can also be seen in the top right corner. Moving towards the lower left, portions of the rough Hathor region are visible, as well as parts of Ma'at farther on the left. The linear and almost parallel features visible on the right, instead, are part of Bastet. The three-dimensional aspect of the nucleus and of its characteristic surface features is almost lost in this low phase-angle view, due to the scarcity of shadows. This is even more evident in the image captured by Rosetta’s OSIRIS wide-angle camera at 00:57 UTC on 10 April, about one […]

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