The Philae lander of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission captured this view during its first bounce after hitting the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 12 November 2014, with blurring as a result of the lander’s own motion. The lander was descending at about 3.2 kilometres per hour (2 mph) when it first touched the surface, and its first bounce lasted almost two hours and carried it about one kilometre (0.6 miles) both aloft and downrange. The image from the lander’s CIVA camera is the first view from Philae after its initial touchdown.
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X-ray echoes of a shredded star provide close-up of monster black hole
Some 3.9 billion years ago in the heart of a distant galaxy, the intense tidal pull of a monster black hole shredded a star that passed too close. After X-rays produced in this event first reached Earth on 28 March 2011, scientists concluded that the outburst, now known as Swift J1644+57, also represented the sudden flare-up of a previously inactive black hole.
No large caverns found inside Comet 67P
Comets are known to be a mixture of dust and ice, and if fully compact, they would be heavier than water. However, measurements have shown some of them to have densities much lower than that of water ice, implying that comets must be highly porous. A new study of low-density Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko using data from ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft rules out a cavernous interior.
The spider in the loop
This multicoloured swirl of yellow and blue shows a prominent ring of gas near the North Celestial Pole. The pole appears to be fixed in place, while the rest of the night sky slowly circles around it because of Earth’s rotation. This image comes courtesy of ESA’s Planck satellite, which spent years mapping the entire sky in exquisite detail between 2009 and 2013.