This is the Surface of a Comet

Back in 2014, the Rosetta spacecraft captured the world’s imagination by arriving at a comet and snapping the first-ever photos of a comet’s surface. Now here’s something that’s even better: a series of photos turned into a motion picture of what it’s like on the comet at ground level.

The 1-second video was made by Twitter user @landru79 using 12.5-second-exposure photos captured on June 1st, 2016, by Rosetta and shared with the world by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System.

One of the still frames used. Photo by the EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY-ESAC

“[I]t’s only a pre-work stacking and balancing B/N frames,” @landru79 writes. “Next step color GIF using only filters 22 -orange-, 23 -green-, and 24 -blue-. ~6 RGB possible. Will see… much parallax to manage.”

The dots traveling smoothly toward the bottom of the frame in the background are stars, while the fast-moving streaks of light in the foreground are dust particles.

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