It’s been a while since I posted a cool picture. So here you go:
The bright red spot is Mars, and all the fuzziness in the background is actually the combined light from billions of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Now, this is a pretty cool picture all by its lonesome, but what makes this much, much cooler is that it was not taken here on Earth! This image is from the European spacecraft Rosetta, due to rendezvous with the comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014.
Rosetta will be using Mars to give it a speed boost via gravitational slingshot at the end of February. As it passes through the asteroid belt it will pass near enough to two asteroids — 2867 Steins and 21 Lutetia — to get some pretty good images of them. We still only have close-up imaging of a handful of asteroids, so these images will be very exciting when they come in. But it’ll be a while: the encounters aren’t until September 2008 and July 2010, respectively.
However, on the Rosetta site they have a nifty animation of Lutetia as seen by the spacecraft. It’s still a little dot, but you can see it moving against the starry background, a combination of the movement of the spacecraft and the asteroid. Coooool.
When Rosetta reaches the comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko, it will release a lander that will physically, well, land on the comet nucleus! We will then, for the first time in history, have close-up images taken of the surface of a comet, from that surface! I can only imagine what we’ll see when that happens. Will it be smooth? Bumpy? Cratered? Spiky? Covered with boulders, snow drifts, icy patches?
If you’re in the southern hemisphere, you can still see Comet McNaught. If you can, take a good look at it. Comets are still a big mystery, but because we’re curious, because we’re smart, and because we want to find things out, they won’t remain mysterious forever.
January 26th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Are there any plans to do a soft landing on the asteroid Ceres? Would be fascinating to analyze the structure of it.
Gary 7
January 26th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Addendum: I realize this particular probe isn’t involved but was wondering if there are any FUTURE probes planed involving Ceres?
GAry 7
January 26th, 2007 at 11:54 am
The DAWN mission involves Ceres.
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/
January 26th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Gary, the Dawn mission (if all goes as planned) is scheduled to arrive at Ceres in February 2015.
January 26th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
What is that bright fuzzy dot to the left of Mars?
January 26th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
so, what part of comets are a big mystery? origins?
just curious… being that I did much of my research in a former life about comet plasma tails…
January 26th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
[...] Here’s a gorgeous picture of Mars against the background of the Milky Way, taken by Rosetta on its way to rendezvous with a comet in 2014. I just love these little robots we have running around the solar system and telling so much so much faster than people will do. How many of these wonderful travels are we going to give up in order to try to put people on the moon? [...]
January 27th, 2007 at 8:59 am
Keep those references to cool pictures comming.
Today I did two things:
- I altered an existing screen saver so it now has a reference to the download folder of my cool astro pictures (There was an easier way, but this is more flexible in the long run)
- I downloaded the widget “DeskSaver” again (had not come around to doing this after I move to my new computer)
Now, all these cool pictures are running as a slideshow on my desktop area.
As I said, just keep them comming.
February 21st, 2007 at 9:28 am
I was lead propulsion test engineer on Rosetta and it was a tough baby I can tell you – but seeing this picture gives me goosebumps – I can’t wait for the pics from the Mars fly by, the asteroid flybys and the cometray landing – makes all the blood sweat and tears worthwhile.
Thanks for publishing the picture on the website – made my day.
July 13th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
After spending several hours categorizing galaxies on GalaxyZoo.com, I began to wonder if any photos have ever been taken of the Milky Way from the outside of it. I have only found one actual snapshot of our galaxy: it is an edge-on by COBE (http://today.slac.stanford.edu/a/2006/11-22.htm). I have scanned past hundreds of “artist’s renditions” who all understand that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, while individually interpreting their own fantasies of how our spiral galaxy appears from the viewpoint of, say, an Andromedan. Are you aware of any photos from space of the Milky Way in all its glory? Thanks.
August 5th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Since the Milky Way galaxy is 150,000 light years across, it would take quite a while (that’s the understatement of the century) for a space ship from here to get far enough away from it to take a picture – like maybe a few billion years traveling at the speed of light (which is, of course, impossible).