General  17 November, 2009 11:52

Views of Rosetta from Earth: Quick thanks

Note a comment left by J.M. Mondelo, who observed Rosetta on 12 November 2009 (thanks for the link and great pictures!). -- Daniel
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General , Optical observation  17 November, 2009 11:46

Rosetta receding

Kristin wrote to us early on Saturday morning, 14 November.

During the night of 13/14 November, the team at ESA's Optical Ground Station, Tenerife, imaged Rosetta receding from Earth. The spacecraft's brightness was very low as they were looking at the non-illuminated side of the solar arrays; in contrast, during approach, sunlight was reflected from the solar arrays toward us (this explains the long exposure time and bad image quality compared with the approach observations done on 11/12 and 12/13 November).

Movie recorded between 04:51 and 05:20 UTC on 14 Nov. It consists of 10 images with an exposure time of 2 min and a separation of 3 min. The field is located in Leo and has a size of 5 x 5 arcmin, North is up and East is left. The telescope was tracking the stars so that Rosetta appears as a stripe while the stars appear as dots. Rosetta moves roughly from East to West. The bright star at the bottom of the image has magnitude 12.5, and the bright star at the top has magnitude 13.4.

This movie was recorded between 04:51 and 05:20 UTC on 14 Nov. It consists of 10 images with an exposure time of  2 min and a separation of 3 min. The field is located in Leo and has a size of 5 x 5 arcmin; North is up and East is left. The telescope was tracking the stars so that Rosetta appears as a stripe while the stars appear as dots. Rosetta moves roughly from East to West. The bright star at the bottom of the image has magnitude 12.5, and the bright star at the top has magnitude 13.4.

Image taken at 05:39 UTC on 14 Nov with an exposure time of 5 min. The field is located in Leo and has a size of 5 x 5 arcmin, North is up and East is left. The telescope was tracking the stars so that Rosetta appears as a stripe a little above right centre of the image. The spacecraft moves less than 1 arcmin during the 5 min exposure, roughly from East to West. The brightest star at the bottom of the image has magnitude 12.6. Note that the vertical bright line that crosses Rosetta is a camera artefact.

This image was taken at 05:39 UTC on 14 Nov with an exposure time of 5 min. The field is located in Leo and has a size of 5 x 5 arcmin, North is up and East is left. The telescope was tracking the stars so that Rosetta appears as a stripe a little above centre-right of the image. The spacecraft moves less than 1 arcmin during the 5 min exposure, roughly from East to West. The brightest star at the bottom of the image has magnitude 12.6. Note that the vertical bright line that crosses Rosetta is a camera artefact. Kristin Wirth wrote:

"I will leave the Teide Observatory and Tenerife now, and head for the airport. I really enjoyed my time at the Optical Ground Station, together with a great team and at a special location - opposite the Teide mountain, with the clouds below us. I would like to thank everybody for their support, in particular Lilian Dominguez Palmero who operated the telescope for me." -- Kristin

And we're going to take this opportunity to thank Kristin for all her great help and input for the Rosetta Blog over the past week!

Finally, a 'farewell' (for now) from us both and a sincere 'thank you' to every one who visited the Rosetta Blog - it has been a lot of fun and we have especially enjoyed seeing the many comments left by visitors. 

We plan to be back again in 2010 as Rosetta continues on her fascinating journey to the outer Solar System - including preparations for deep-space hibernation and the encounter with asteroid Lutetia on 10 July 2010 (from a distance of just 3000 km!). --Amruta & Daniel

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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 21:54 CET on 13 November, as Rosetta’s second Earth swing-by concluded, while the spacecraft was flying at a height of about 5415 km directly above 44.35° west and 64.49° south. Credits: ESA Image of the Earth acquired with the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera from a distance of 633 000 km on 12 November 2009 at 13:28 CET. || The resolution is 12 km/pixel. || The image is a part of a sequence of images taken every hour through one full rotation (24 hours). The movie will be published later. || Three images with an orange, green, and blue filter were combined to create this one. The illuminated crescent is centered roughly around the South Pole (South at the bottom of the image). The outline of Antarctica is visible under the clouds that form the striking south-polar vortex. Pack ice in front of the coastline with its strong spectacular reflection is the cause for the very bright spots on the image. This is a composite of four images combined to show the illuminated crescent of Earth and the cities of the northern hemisphere. The images were acquired with the OSIRIS Wide Angle Camera (WAC) during Rosetta’s second Earth swing-by on 13 November. This image showing islands of light created by human habitation was taken with the OSIRIS WAC at 19:45 CET, about 2 hours before the closest approach of the spacecraft to Earth. At the time, Rosetta was about 80 000 km above the Indian Ocean where the local time approached midnight (the angle between Sun, Earth and Rosetta was about 160°). The image was taken with a five-second exposure of the WAC with the red filter. This image showing Earth’s illuminated crescent was taken with the WAC at 20:05 CET as Rosetta was about 75 000 km from Earth. The crescent seen is around Antarctica. The image is a colour composite combining images obtained at various wavelengths. Credits: ESA ©2005 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/ UPM/DASP/IDA First OSIRIS image acquired during Earth Swing-by No. 3 (2009). The image shows the Moon as seen through the OSIRIS NAC (high-resolution narrow-angle camera) using the orange filter from a distance of 4.3 million kilometres at 8/11 03:10 UTC. Rosetta is flying towards the Earth coming in from the night side which is the reason for the very narrow illuminated crescent. 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