More than 1000 Rosetta NavCam images released!

Written by
Emily Lakdawalla
April 29, 2015
Today the European Space Agency released a ton of NavCam images, taken as the spacecraft approached and then entered orbit at the comet. You can see the comet in all its sunlit and shadowy moods. The new release includes images taken from ranges between 800 and 30 kilometers to the comet, through late September 2014. At that time the comet wasn't yet particularly active, so the comet's jets are not obvious in the thumbnail images; you have to download the original data and play with contrast to reveal them. You can access all the data here at the Rosetta archive image browser. You can find out more about the archive on the ESA blog.
To give you a taste of the data that has been released today, ESA made a video:
Rosetta Navcam's reconnaissance of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko This animation of NavCam images follows Rosetta’s approach to the comet from a distance of about 800 kilometers on August 1, 2014 to about 62 kilometers on August 22.Video: ESA / Rosetta / NavCam
I captured thumbnails of all of the NavCam images that have been released that show the shape of the comet's nucleus. Enjoy!



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