Rosetta photographed the dark side of the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko

The image of the comet taken by the OSIRIS tool on October 30, 2014 from a distance of about 30 kilometers. The left side of the comet's dark side is visible.

Despite the fact that the Rosetta space station has already sent a large number of photographs of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in excellent quality to Earth, no one has yet seen some sides of the core of this space object. Until now, when Rosetta was able to photograph the dark side of the comet.

This part of the nucleus is in the shadow all the time, due to the peculiarities of the comet's rotation, and the scientists received only fragmentary photos of this side, partially illuminated by light scattered by dust.
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The shaded side will remain so until May 2015, but experts have already received fairly high-quality photos of the “eternal night” territory. Photos obtained with the OSIRIS tool. It is worth noting that it is from the dark side of the comet that the matter will leave most actively when the comet approaches the Sun as close as possible.


Photo taken September 29 from a distance of about 19 km. No surface visible

OSIRIS uses a 16-bit matrix, which allows to increase the number of shades of gray up to 65 thousand, thanks to which the images reflect the structure of the comet's surface more or less clearly.

Via rosetta