Advanced photography !

<p>A few first shots from the comet Tchourioumov-Guérassimenko, some four billion miles from where you are sitting. Extreme travel photography !<br>

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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/sets/72157638315605535/" target="_blank">https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/sets/72157638315605535/</a></p>

<p>Nice! <br>

But to be honest, I could have made similar photos in my backyard without all that expense. :Þ</p>

<p>Michael, where heck are you living ? It could have been nice, if you had told the European Space Agency some ten years ago :)</p>

<p>Thanks, Anders. Some great photos. Advanced photography, indeed. Bravo to the European space agency and its international partners (including some equipment from NASA). Talk about a 500 million mile tethering! Let's hope that the "tripod" (harpoons) will deploy and the little space geologist will drill out some samples that might contain some hint at organic matter. </p>

<p>No color?</p>

<p>Sanford, just a guess: I think the comet is so distant from the sun that it probably receives very little light making color pictures a real challenge. </p>

<p>The remarkable thing is getting the camera near, and ultimately attached to a relatively tiny object in space after a voyage of ten years.</p>

<p>Fhotos of this sort are generally black and white. If there is color, successive shots are taken through various filters and combined in the lab. The surface is reportedly blacker than charcoal, so what light reaches the surface is reflected poorly. That doesn't mean there isn't any color, if you look hard enough, even if it is false color taken through IR and UV filters.</p>

<p>Amazing. Enhanced or not....to be looking at the surface of a comet is, beyond words. </p>

<p>Arthur you are right that the distance between us and the comet is some 500 million miles. The satellite has travelled around four billion miles to get there, as far as I have understood.</p>

<p>Well said, Steve. I wonder how long it will take the Deniers to jump on this one?</p>

Shouldn't this post be in the travel forum?

<p>When is the first photo workshop organized to this destination? ;-)</p>

<p>It's actually comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko according to http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov/. Either way, it's barely pronounceable.</p>

<p>Glenn, depending on which foreign language you use for writing Russian words .</p>

<p>The Russian name for the comet is "Комета Чурюмова — Герасименко" (discovered in 1969) which is written, like you mention as: "<em>Churyumov-Gerasimenko"</em> in English language texts, but like <em>"</em><em>Tchourioumov-Guérassimenko"</em> in French texts, my main daily language.<br /> <br /> I'm sure it is easily pronounceable for Russians and Russian speaking people in general and that it sounds like it is written in the two versions.</p>

<p>That is the difference between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA would have Photoshopped that thing to show every color of the rainbow and then added the suggestion of possible life. They usually do that sort of thing about the time their budget is up for renewal.</p>

<p>Thank you for the link Anders. I was looking for photo's of this event.</p>

<p>Uh....About the Deniers? It didn't take long:</p>

<p>http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/philae-comet-lander-alien-%e2%80%98cover-up%e2%80%99-conspiracy-theories-emerge/ar-BBdy1vH?ocid=EIE9HP</p>

<p>:-))</p>

<p>What-ah ya' bet this landing nudges the comet's original trajectory onto a path toward Earth.</p>

<p>Oh well...the best laid plans of mice and photographers.</p>

<p>Looks like a macro shot of a dirt clod in space. Hope they planned for placing a familiar object next to Rosetta's lander like a bag of Skittles for visual scaling.</p>

<p>"The size of the nucleus is estimated to be 3.5×4 km (2.2×2.5 mi).[12][26][27]" (Wikipedia)<br /> <br /> That is 2.2x2.5 miles, with a mass of (1.0±0.1)×10¹³ kg<sup id="cite_ref-esa20140821_3-0"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/67P/Churyumov%E2%80%93Gerasimenko#cite_note-esa20140821-3">[3]</a></sup></p>

<p>"(The acceleration due to gravity on the surface of Churyumov–Gerasimenko has been estimated for simulation purposes at 10⁻³ m/s²,<sup id="cite_ref-Hilchenbach2004_32-0"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/67P/Churyumov%E2%80%93Gerasimenko#cite_note-Hilchenbach2004-32">[32]</a></sup> or about one ten-thousandth of that on Earth."</p>

<p>That is sufficient to give it an escape velocity of Estimated 1 m/s (3 ft/s)<sup id="cite_ref-mpg20140121_4-0"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/67P/Churyumov%E2%80%93Gerasimenko#cite_note-mpg20140121-4">[4] </a></sup></p>

<p>Anything slower than that will fall back to its surface. Anything faster will leave it and drift or fly into space.</p>

<p>It is all so very remarkable. In the meantime, the American space program is. . . where? </p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Lannie, the American space program is alive and well though maybe sitting a little sideways at the moment due to the ending of the Space Shuttle program. The Kepler 2 mission for example, looking for exoplanets is a good example of their excellent ongoing work :<br /> http://keplerscience.arc.nasa.gov/K2/<br /> Meanwhile the ESA Rosetta / Philae probe and lander have performed amazingly well with some fascinating photos - thanks for the link, Anders! <br /> It looks like ESA will try to re-orientate Philae once the primary science has been done as far as possible with a view to getting more sunlight for secondary battery charging.<br /> I remember when it blasted off a decade ago I thought the whole mission sounded pretty ambitious with loads of possible things to go wrong. But almost everything has gone to plan - most impressive! Now we wait for the data analysis to see what comets can tell us about the early Solar System. <br /> Meanwhile some of those shots look a bit underexposed to me...:-)</p>

<p>Colin, as you surely know, they are underexposed because the poor thing seems to have ended up in a dark hole with cliffs on all sides and with one leg not touching the ground. That they are "exposed" at all is a miracle. As I understand, the ESA will might try to make it jump out of the hole with all the risks that implies. It could end up overturned; jumping a couple of miles; or flying out into the space again.<br>

We will hear more from ESA at 13.00 GMT</p>

<p>Anders, yes, little joke...:-)<br /> ....now waiting to see if, before its batteries die, Philae can dig up and analyse bits of the comet to look for carbon based compounds, water etc. Good luck to Philae and bless its little metallic heart.</p>

<p>Apart from the photos and the analyses Philae is sending back (it has already carried out 80% of its mission according to ESA), maybe the most remarkable material it provides scientist with is the unexplainable sound it has registered. Read and listen to this registration of the "S<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YkL6bMVXjY">ong of Philae</a> which includes a some elements to a theory. </p>

 

<p>NASA had it's own DeepImpact/EPOXI comet mission in 2005 when it's 370 kg deep impact probe slammed into comet Tempel 1 at over 10 km/hr. Instruments on the flyby spacecraft observed the impact, crater and debris with optical imaging cameras and infrared spectral mapping. This was the first mission to explore a comet's interior. One photo of the impact may be viewed at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/multimedia/pia02137.html#.VGZjldbQ-ig . Sorry, no Photoshopped color, just plain old black and white.</p>

<p>Thanks for the name clarification Anders. Foreign languages were never one of my strong points. I remember being relieved as an engineering and physics student starting college to learn that I did not have to take a foreign language. Of course, I now regret not having done so, although the language that I wish I had taken is Japanese, which was not big on the curriculum in the 1960s.</p>

<p>Would littering these heavenly bodies with pop culture sourced trash like the Skittles bag I mentioned above interrupt, change or affect in any way the evolutionary space time continuum?</p>

<p>Another way to put it is are we Earthlings exerting some type of unintended change with our continuing space explorations such as this comet that may ripple across the universe with potential unexpected outcomes in the distant future? </p>

<p>We humans and our activities such as these are so different from the normal, natural desolate chaos of outer space and the universe. Would leaving litter on these traveling interstellar space rocks seem like a good idea or not? </p>

<p>Some of these comets come from other galaxies, right? So we could use them to exert change by altering them in some way with litter or other objects in the chance they might slam into some distant planet in another galaxy. IOW use these comets and asteroids as objects to seed the universe instead of sending man made satellites. </p>