[TELEGRAPH.CO.UK] Dramatic images of a comet hurtling through space some 250 million miles from Earth have revealed a stunning landscape of towering cliffs soaring above a rugged surface strewn with giant boulders.
The walls of rock are more than half a mile high, but the low surface gravity of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko probably means that a human would survive a jump from its top.
The images were captured by the Rosetta, a robotic spacecraft launched by the European Space Agency that began orbiting the 2.5 mile wide comet in early August before deploying the Philae lander to the surface.
But the full dramatic contours, including the frighteningly vertical cliffs, were then identified by Stuart Atkinson, a British amateur astronomer and image processing expert who zoomed in on the most intriguing views yet of its imposing landscape.
"Well, Christmas came early for me today," Mr Atkinson wrote on his CumbrianSky blog after his work was made Astronomy Picture of the Day by the US space agency Nasa. |