For two years, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft visited a comet known as Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The ESA frequently publishes images taken by the probe, and in March, it released a fresh batch of data, reports Business Insider. A lot of the photos Rosetta took are in sequence, so a fan of the spacecraft decided to animate some of them into a stunning new video. Twitter user “landru79” stacked and stitched the pictures into a time-lapse movie.
Amazing scene from #comet #67P created by @Iandru79 using latest #Rosetta image release https://t.co/vPmjbScxrf
— ESA Science (@esascience) April 24, 2018
The movie shows roughly 25 minutes of flight past Comet 67P on June 1, 2016, and you can see stars move behind the comet as it tumbles through space. Cosmic rays also hit Rosetta’s camera sensor, so you see white streaks in the images. Rosetta also set down a probe called Philae on the comet’s surface, though it fell into a crevice and hasn’t been heard of since.
On September 30, 2016, the ESA purposefully crashed Rosetta, but the robot did take a series of photos along the way.
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