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Subscribe to RSSYou've seen the stunning still photos from the Deep Impact probe's close encounter with Comet Hartley 2 on Thursday. Now watch the movie. Today NASA released a video clip that shows how the comet looked as the spacecraft approached to within 435 miles, then journeyed away again. The version above slows down the motion and loops the arrival and departure three times. You can clearly see the jets of gas streaming out from the sun-warmed, peanut-shaped iceball.
The researchers who took part in Deep Impact's EPOXI flyby mission say they'll learn a lot about the nature of comets and the origins of the solar system. And who knows? There might be still another mission awaiting Deep Impact, which took on the Hartley 2 flyby after shooting a bullet at another comet, Tempel 1, five years earlier. To keep up with the mission and the pictures it's still sending back to Earth, click on over to the EPOXI website as well as the mission's Facebook page.
Here's another video clip from MSNBC's "Countdown," in which Franklin Institute astronomer Derrick Pitts talks about the significance of the comet encounter.
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amazing, just amazing!
That is pretty cool.
I just looked up some other comet flyby video and you can definitely see much more detail of the comet in these photos. In 1986, Giotto made a flyby of Halley and got some very good video, but the comet's surface was pretty much obscured by the coma. Props to whomever decided to make the flyby much farther from the sun!
What an odd shape. I'd expect a rougher, more irregular shape. This almost looks worn, like a rock tumbling in a stream. Never saw that rock. My SF concept of a comet is not these pictures.
Any ideas regarding it's shape?
looks like a turd
It may be what's called a "contact binary", where two chunks of rock come together in space, but their combined gravity is too low to squash them together. This is most likely a "rubble pile", not a solid chunk of rock. Depending on the spin rate, it could actually be pulling itself apart, which would explain the pinched center part. I've read elsewhere that this comet is losing several feet of its surface to space every time it swings around the Sun, so eventually it will just go poof.
Wow & Wow.
First, Wow - wonderful pictures! This is so well done, considering the distances, speeds and times involved. Quite an accomplishment! Very, very impressive.
Second, Wow - 6 comments? Really? Some minor actor can go on a drunken rampage, and get 1000 comments. Mankind sends probes on decade long missions, and the stories might get a half dozen comments. Kinda a sad commentary on our values as a people!
I heard It was going north, straight for houston texas at channelview and expected to hit exactly on my ex girlfriends house.
any chance we can leave remote camras on it ?