{"id":36123,"date":"2011-06-12T15:50:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-12T15:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/rosetta%e2%80%99s-cometary-goal-now-in-sight-bad-astronomy\/"},"modified":"2011-06-12T15:50:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-12T15:50:00","slug":"rosetta%e2%80%99s-cometary-goal-now-in-sight-bad-astronomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/rosetta%e2%80%99s-cometary-goal-now-in-sight-bad-astronomy.php","title":{"rendered":"Rosetta\u2019s cometary goal now in sight | Bad Astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rosetta is an amazing probe launched by the European Space Agency. In 2014 it will go into orbit around the comet 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and actually <em>deploy a lander<\/em> to sample the surface!<\/p><p>That rendezvous is still years away, but the target is now in sight: Rosetta has returned <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mps.mpg.de\/en\/aktuelles\/pressenotizen\/pressenotiz_20110608.html\">its first image of the comet<\/a>.<\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mps.mpg.de\/images\/aktuelles\/pressenotizen\/pressenotizen_2011\/pressenotiz_20110608_1_vga.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/16678_5815730802_d4209bb7ed_o.jpg\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p>Oh, very cool! The top image is the wide angle shot, showing a densely-populated star field toward the center of our galaxy; from Rosetta that&rsquo;s the direction to the comet. The second image zooms in a bit, and you can see some distant stars and nebulosity. The bottom one has been processed to remove the stars, and the nucleus of Churyumov-Gerasimenko stands out. <\/p><p>Note that this image was taken when Rosetta was still 163 <em>million<\/em> kilometers (100 million miles) from the comet &mdash; that&rsquo;s more than the distance from the Earth to the Sun! That&rsquo;s why it took a total of 13 hours of exposure time to see the comet in these images; it&rsquo;s still extremely faint from that great distance.<\/p><p>These pictures are important for several reasons: they test the cameras, a critical event for the upcoming encounter; they provide navigation cues, allowing ...<\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/eLBAyDEVBfEobhfxtEHa7fpDBmk\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/16678_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><br><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/eLBAyDEVBfEobhfxtEHa7fpDBmk\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/16678_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/16678_V2Zz7da_KKw\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/16678_OYQO1-OFcFQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rosetta is an amazing probe launched by the European Space Agency. In 2014 it will go into orbit around the comet 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and actually deploy a lander to sample the surface!That rendezvous is still years away, but the target is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/rosetta%e2%80%99s-cometary-goal-now-in-sight-bad-astronomy.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}