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Incredible New Gif Shows Cosmic 'Snow' On the Surface of a Comet (gizmodo.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the winter-wonderland dept.

Press2ToContinue shares a report from Gizmodo: What you're looking at is the surface of the comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is orbited by the European Space Agency's Rosetta probe. The photo comes from Rosetta's OSIRIS, or Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System. The raw data was collected on June 1, 2016, and posted publicly on March 22 of this year. Twitter user landru79 processed the gif from this data release and shared it yesterday. In the foreground is the comet's surface (still several kilometers away from the probe), and three kinds of specks. The stars in the background belong to the constellation Canis Major, according to ESA senior advisor Mark McCaughrean. Some of the foreground stuff could be streaks from high-energy particles striking the cameraâ"it's a charge-coupled device (CCD), so even invisible particles can leave streaks in the results. And some could be dust from the comet itself.

16 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. New Gif? by ls671 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    New Gif?

    Who cares about the image format in such a context?

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    Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    1. Re:New Gif? by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Insightful

      New Gif?

      Who cares about the image format in such a context?

      The only thing GIF is used for these days is animations on the web, so... yes it's useful information.

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      No sig today...
    2. Re:New Gif? by caparra · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nowadays gif means 'short animation', much more than a particular format. Slashdot seems to be full of cranky Statlers and Waldorfs this days.

    3. Re:New Gif? by caparra · · Score: 2

      Words mean... whatever people decide they mean. Unless you are on a technical enviroment. Or an asshole environment. If someone on the street talks about a gif he saw, and you later find out it was really a PNG, please, please, shut up.

    4. Re:New Gif? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Wouldn't it have made more sense to say "animation", given that is the important bit of information that you otherwise have to infer from it being a GIF?

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    5. Re:New Gif? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      Unlikely, for the same reason you don't see stars in Apollo photos.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    6. Re:New Gif? by king+neckbeard · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Slashdot IS an asshole environment.

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    7. Re:New Gif? by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      When you hear it's a GIF, you are made aware that it is a ridiculous waste of bandwidth, also.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    8. Re:New Gif? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      Hey man, have you seen the new Star Wars GIF now playing in the theatres?

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    9. Re:New Gif? by msauve · · Score: 3, Informative

      Because the ESA is using 1960's film cameras?

      You do see stars in Apollo photos. Just not when the camera is set to properly expose the sunlit lunar surface, which causes the stars to be vastly underexposed. Looking at the data for one of the images, it's a 12.5 second exposure. The scene is indirectly illuminated, you can see what appears to be an overexposed, sunlit highlight in the last frame of the animation.

      The "falling" stuff is the starfield, they're all moving in unison. Read the comments at the original source - the images capture NGC2362 (Mag 4.1) and MGC2354 (Mag 6.1).

      The stuff moving in semi-random directions (but mostly toward the upper left, it appears) is the "snow." That includes the streaks. In order for a cosmic ray to produce a streak, it would have to be traveling along the plane of the image sensor (or strong enough to effect an entire sensor row/column).

      --
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  2. Re:If you post GIFs, you are probably stupid by 91degrees · · Score: 2

    Because GIF only supports up to 256 colours. Although since this is greyscale it doesn't matter. GIF itself doesn't reduce the resolution but users often do because the file size is usually quite large.

  3. Direct link? by SigmundFloyd · · Score: 3

    Anyone got a direct link to the GIF?

    Stupid Twitter is unusable with w3m.

    --
    Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
    1. Re:Direct link? by BlackSupra · · Score: 2

      "new gif" https://imgur.com/a/0GVpB2s

      "newer star-field stabilized gif" https://imgur.com/p05aEhm

      "article" https://www.livescience.com/62...

    2. Re:Direct link? by BlackSupra · · Score: 2

      https://i.imgur.com/O0Aahi5.gi...

      https://i.imgur.com/p05aEhm.gi...

  4. The truth behind the video... by javipas · · Score: 4, Informative

    Seems to be a little different. It's a 25 minute video that has been compressed in that GIF, so the effect is 'dramatized'. https://www.livescience.com/62... According to that report, the GIF, impressive as it is, is somewhat misleading.

  5. Imagine it's from a movie by Zaiff+Urgulbunger · · Score: 2

    If I had seen that animation without knowing where it's from, I'd probably assume it was from a crap movie. Because as it turns out, in real life, the effects are shit! :D

    It *is* crazy cool considering it is real though.