Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Deep Impact’s comet crash

Deep Impact’s comet crash
Deep Impact’s comet crash This animation shows the first minute of the evolution of the impact plume that blasted off of comet Tempel 1 following the Deep Impact Impactor spacecraft's crash. It consists of 30 frames from the flyby craft's high-resolution imager, which suffered from a blurring problem. Images were only moderately deconvolved to reduce this blur (the primary idea was to show plume evolution, not nucleus details; deconvolution increases noise in otherwise smooth areas without really bringing out detail) and slightly processed to bring out plume details. NASA / JPL / UMD / Gordan Ugarkovic