CometWatch from Earth – 22 May
▻http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/06/12/cometwatch-from-earth-22-may
Astronomers using ESO’s ground-based Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile are watching the development of #Comet_67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s coma and tail from Earth. This image is based on data acquired on 22 May and is about 300 000 km wide at the distance of the #comet. The comet’s dusty coma and tail is swept away from the Sun, which is towards the left of the image in this orientation. The tail can be seen to stretch at least 120 000 km in this relatively shallow image, and in deeper #Images, the coma alone is estimated to be at least 80–100 000 km across. As each pixel in this image spans roughly 400 km at the comet, both #Rosetta and the nucleus of 67P/C-G are too small to be resolved. But images like these provide important context information for the images taken by the spacecraft (...)
#Ground-based_observations #ground-based_observations #rosetta