General , Optical observation  11 November, 2009 20:48

Tonight's optical observations

Just got a note from ESA's Kristin Wirth; she's just arrived at the Optical Ground Station (OGS) at the La Teide Observatory, Tenerife. Observations are planned for tonight and we hope she and the colleagues there have success - weather permitting! More details on Thursday AM. -- Daniel
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General , Science , Flight Dynamics  11 November, 2009 10:12

Rosetta's distance to Herschel and Planck

Just last night, I found an interesting question in my inbox, "Out of interest, what is the closest that Rosetta gets to Planck during the fly-by?"

It was from Stuart Lowe, member of the Planck Low Frequency Instrument team at Jodrell Bank Observatory in the UK.

We asked Trevor Morley, one of the Flight Dynamics specialists at ESOC working on Rosetta, if he could help. He sent these minimum separation distances from Rosetta:

Planck : 1.225 million km at 03:39 CET on 12 November.

Herschel: 1.456 million km at 07:53 CET on 12 November

That's quite a distance, but tiny compared to what Rosetta's already covered since the start of her mission. By the time the swingby has been completed, this figure will be almost 4500 million km!

--Amruta
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   Slideshow
This image was taken by Rosetta’s navigation camera (NAVCAM) right after Rosetta’s closest approach to Earth. The picture was taken at 21:56 CET on 13 November, as Rosetta’s second Earth swing-by concluded, while the spacecraft was flying at a height of about 5500 km from the surface. Credits: ESA This picture of the Moon was taken by Rosetta’s navigation camera (NAVCAM) right after the comet chaser’s closest approach to our planet. The picture was taken at 00:10 CET on 14 November, as Rosetta’s second Earth swing-by concluded, while the spacecraft was flying at a height of about 6250 km from the surface. Credits: ESA During the swing-by, the Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS)on board Rosetta observed Earth’s night-side. The is a picture taken with the OSIRIS Wide Angle Camera (WAC), showing the same view seen in the OSIRIS Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) image. It is shown in false colour to emphasise city lights seen at night. This image was acquired on 13 November 2007 at 20:30 CET using the WAC with a red filter. Credits: ESA ©2005 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA This picture of the Moon was taken with the OSIRIS Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) at 07:36 CET on 13 November. This was about nine hours after Rosetta's closest approach to Earth. OSIRIS has been designed to image faint objects, so a neutral density filter was placed in the optical path to reduce the sensitivity of the camera to one fiftieth. The above image was acquired through the far-focus red filter of the camera (750 nanometres). Credits: ESA ©2007 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA Image taken by NAVCAM A on 2010/07/06 03:45:02 UTC. Lutetia is the bright object in the middle of the 5x5 deg FOV. At that time, the distance was roughly 5.8 million km.