The Cliffs of Churyumov-Gerasimenko: an enhanced and procosessed crop of an image from Rosetta's navcam. Credits: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM, processing by Stuart Atkinson.
Images from space don’t get more dramatic than this. Image processing wizard Stuart Atkinson zoomed in on one of the most intriguing views yet of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, highlighting the contrasts of dark and light, smooth and rugged, soft contours and frighteningly vertical cliffs.
The orginal image, below, is a four-image mosaic made from images snapped by Rosetta’s navigation camera, taken from a distance of 20.1 km from the center of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 10 December. The image resolution is 1.71 m/pixel and the individual 1024 x 1024 frames measure 1.75 km across. The mosaic is slightly cropped and measures 2.9 x 2.6 km.
You can see more about this image on the Rosetta blog. See more of Stu’s great work on his website Cumbrian Sky and on Twitter.
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