A Stunning Look at the Cliffs of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

By Nancy Atkinson - December 16, 2014 at 12:23 PM UTC | Planetary Science

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.

[caption id="attachment_117365" align="aligncenter" width="580"]

This four-image mosaic comprises images taken from a distance of 20.1 km from the center of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on December 10, 2014. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM. [/caption]

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

.