After a 10 year-long journey chasing its target, Rosetta has today become the first spacecraft to rendezvous with a comet, opening a new chapter in Solar System exploration. Here’s how the view must have been:

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Comet on 3 August 2014 – front. Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

The image shows Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on 3 August from a distance of 285 km. The image resolution is 5.3 metres/pixel. The image was exposed for 1.6 seconds. It is unprocessed, just brightness scaled.

Here’s another image, showing the “other” side of the comet. The two images are separated by about 4 hours (120 degree comet rotation).

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Comet on 3 August 2014 – back. Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

And if you’re wondering about the comet’s activity, here’s another recent image that shows the surroundings of 67P/C-G’s nucleus:

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Comet activity on 2 August 2014. Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

It was taken by Rosetta’s OSIRIS wide-angle camera on 2 August 2014, from a distance of 550 km. An oxygen-I gas filter with a central wavelength of 631.6 nm was used. This narrowband filter has 4 nm bandwidth.

Read more about Rosetta’s rendezvous with the comet here.