{"id":812180,"date":"2026-10-24T07:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T07:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/812180\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T07:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T07:00:10","slug":"apod-2026-october-24-rosettas-selfie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/812180\/","title":{"rendered":"APOD: 2026 October 24 \u2013 Rosetta&#8217;s Selfie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p-md margin-0 media-detail-hero__description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tExplanation: <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.esa.int\/rosetta\/2014\/10\/14\/mission-selfie-from-16-km\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">This Rosetta spacecraft selfie<\/a> was snapped on October 7th, 2014. At the time the <a href=\"https:\/\/rosetta.esa.int\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">comet-chasing spacecraft<\/a> was about 472 million kilometers from planet Earth, but only 16 kilometers from the surface of <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/image-article\/apod-2021-november-13-rosettas-comet-in-gemini\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">comet 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko<\/a>. Looming beyond the spacecraft near the top of the frame, dust and gas stream away from the comet&#8217;s curious <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/image-article\/apod-2014-august-7-rosettas-rendezvous\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">double-lobed nucleus<\/a>. Bright sunlight glints off one of Rosetta&#8217;s 14 meter long solar arrays. In fact, two exposures, one short and one long, were combined to record the dramatic high contrast scene using the CIVA camera system on Rosetta&#8217;s still-attached <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Philae_(spacecraft)\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Philae lander<\/a>. Its chosen <a href=\"https:\/\/ui.adsabs.harvard.edu\/abs\/2016DPS....4810101T\/abstract\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">primary landing site<\/a> was on the visible hemisphere of the smaller lobe of the nucleus. This was the last image from Philae&#8217;s camera before the lander separated from Rosetta on November 12. Shortly after separation Philae took another image looking back toward the orbiter and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/spaceinvideos\/Videos\/2014\/09\/Philae_s_descent_and_science_on_the_surface\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">began its descent<\/a> to the nucleus of the comet.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow&#8217;s picture: dark matters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Explanation: This Rosetta spacecraft selfie was snapped on October 7th, 2014. At the time the comet-chasing spacecraft was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[238382,90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-812180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-apod","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}