Philae is well and truly awake: the lander’s CIVA imaging system took these two images of Rosetta’s solar arrays last night!
Rosetta’s solar panels, by Philae’s CIVA imaging system on 14 April 2014. Credits: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA
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Discussion: 3 comments
Truth be told: I only see many withe bands and black something, but the solar panels, I can’t see it.
I do see them !
To understand better the pictures, compare them to https://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2014/02/Rosetta_s_self-portrait_at_Mars !
The sun is coming from the bottom, what we see is the back side of the panels (as their front is pointing towards the sun, of course).
The picture is overly contrasted, because the scattering light from the front is at the edge of saturating the camera, while the rest is absolutely dark (there is nothing there to reflect light on the back of the panels). In the Mars picture, there was of bit of light coming from the planet, which allowed better illumination. Also, CIVA is designed to take pictures of the comet surface, so the fact that we are able to see anything at all is pretty amazing !