November 12th, 2009
Crescent Earth as Seen by Comet Chasing Spacecraft
Written by Nancy Atkinson
Title this one "Rich Blue Crescent" (as opposed to Pale Blue Dot.) This spectacular image of our home planet was captured by the OSIRIS instrument on ESA's Rosetta comet chaser today (November 12) at 12:28 GMT from about 633,000 km as the spacecraft approached Earth for the third and final swingby. Closest approach is due at 07:45 GMT, on November 13. You can follow Rosetta's progress at ESA's Rosetta site and the Rosetta Blog.
Filed under: Comets, Earth Observation
Tags: Comets, Earth Observation, rosettaRelated stories on Universe Today
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7 Responses to “Crescent Earth as Seen by Comet Chasing Spacecraft”
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November 12th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Awesome image of our 'pale blue dot'. The Rosetta site mentions that this is one of a series of images that will be released as a 24 hour time-lapse movie of it's flyby. Should be equally jaw dropping.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Just wow.
November 13th, 2009 at 12:58 am
Neat looking place.
Pity about the present occupants, though…
Treat it like dump…
November 13th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Nice looking place, which I could afford a bit of it.
November 13th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Wow, a million wows.
November 13th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Awe inspiring photo. My wallpaper for this week! (at least)
November 14th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Same here William928
It took a while to get those Mercury images of my desktop.