Crescent Earth

Just hours away from its Earth flyby, Rosetta is busily snapping images and gathering other science data. Among other things, it's using its spectrometric instruments to try to follow up on the Moon water discovery made by Chandrayaan-1, Cassini, and Deep Impact earlier this year; it's gathering tracking data to follow up on the investigation of the "flyby anomaly"; and it's gathering some images for purely photographic purposes, including this lovely view of our Earth as a skinny crescent.

ESA / OSIRIS Team MPS / UPD / LAM / IAA / RSSD / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA

Crescent Earth from Rosetta

Rosetta viewed Earth in a thin crescent phase as it approached for its November 13, 2009 flyby. This image is one in a series taken to make an animation of the rotating Earth over a 24-hour period.