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NASA's Stunning Close-Up Photos of Comet Hartley 2
Several readers have sent word that NASA's EPOXI spacecraft performed a close approach to comet Hartley 2 yesterday, taking pictures within roughly 700km of the nucleus. Bad Astronomer Phil Plait has a collection of some fantastic photographs, and you can check out a ton of other images on the mission website. The Planetary Society blog put together a neat animation of the flyby. NASA's mission fact sheet (PDF) explains EPOXI's background — it's the supplemental mission of the Deep Impact craft that smashed a small probe into a different comet back in 2005 — and why Hartley 2 was chosen for this flyby (they couldn't find their original target).
a giant D_LD_.
Several readers have sent word that NASA's EPOXI spacecraft ....
EPOXI is the name of the mission (an extension of a previous mission), the spacecraft itself is actually called Deep Impact. Just trying to clear up the ambiguity.
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Anyone else having problems viewing the EPOXi webpage? It brings my Firefox to a halt and almost crashes my laptop. Nice way to design your website, embedding more than 70 big images that are just scaled. It shouldn't exactly be rocket-science to make some thumbnails! :)
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
.. it's a rusty battlestar!
Seriously, check out the animation:
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002758/
Amazing pics - those are the kind of photos that make you look at the universe in a whole new way.
The EPOXI team did a great job, but amazingly most of them are straight back to work after this. The Stardust NExT mission, another repurposing of a used deep space spacecraft is going to be revisiting Temple 1 (which deep impact originally hit) in another 4 months.
Right after the flyby much of the team was in meetings to make sure Stardust gets where it needs to go. Not sure whether it'll be easier or harder though. The comet is larger and less likely to stray too far off course, but the spacecraft itself is a finicky thing that's nearly out of fuel... Should be exciting to see even more pictures like this in a few months.
Aren't there supposed to be alien spacecraft following behind these comets? Every few years there's another group offing themselves in order to get a free ride on one of those spaceships.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Just found this animation of the 1986 Giotto fly-by through the tail of Halley. (QuickTime required.) Very cool. Apparently Giotto's still out there and going strong, took a detour through another comet some years later, still does the occasional fly-by near Earth and can be reactivated if there's anything worth looking at. Not bad for a probe that they weren't expecting to survive the Halley encounter.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089489/
Not sure how to explain the smooth terrain in the middle of the comet. Because the rough areas are associated with out gassing, the rough surface in that area is presumably the rubble left behind after much of the ice has gone. So is the smooth area non volatile? Maybe its mostly rock and the ice doesn't sublimate there.
Or alternatively perhaps the smooth area had volatiles but only fine grained solid material so the surface left over doesn't look as rough.
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... Yesterday's news, today.
What, so now they're making spacecrafts out of epoxi? I mean, sure I would expect the Chinese or Indian space programs to pull such. We'll lose our innovative edge if we can't do better.
You must have highly developed sphincter control to be able to form this kind of dumbbell shape without prematurely pinching off the two lobes. Did it take much practice?
I thought it was the name of the material they made the spacecraft from.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Looks very much like the description of the alien vessel in Rendezvous with Rama, minus the airlock. If it had had the airlock as well, THAT might have stirred some interest.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I think one of our best bets on searching our galaxy would be to shoot a probe that burrows into one of these far reaching comets. It would give us a better observable range, and chances are that other intelligent life would be interested in observing the comet as well, should there be any.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
what would happen? I read on wikipedia it is a mile in diameter roughly.
It's amazing, how doggedly the existing 'outgassing icy comets' paradigm hangs on despite so much contrary evidence.
How can anyone look at those pictures, and NOT recognize corona point discharges? Sigh. I suppose most people have never worked with high voltage systems, especially in vacuum, so they have an excuse. But still, NASA... it's really sad.
If you have no idea what this is about, google 'Electric Universe'.
You could have gone through the obligatory intermediate steps in naming the organ, and people would still get your "point."
.. all my life.
I'd like to know a couple things:
1) Do these images imply that the comet is not spinning? Or was it not in frame long enough to tell?
2) Anybody know if there's an animation or a graph depicting the Deep Implact's flight path?
Thanks!
- jw
- ------ Go 'til ya know.
Is there a photo or sketch of its size compared to scientific units like a) Bruce Willis, b) Aircraft carrier, c) Library of Congress?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Someone set us up the bomb.