Capturing the Coma

June 24, 2005

This picture of Tempel 1 was taken by NASA's Deep Impact. Even though the spacecraft was over 10 days away from the comet when these data were acquired, it detected some of the molecules making up the comet's gas and dust envelope, or coma.

This image shows comet Tempel 1, as seen by the Deep Impact spacecraft on June 21, 2005. It was taken using the clear filter of the spacecraft's medium resolution imager camera. The spacecraft was 11,564,081.7 kilometers (7,185,920 miles) away from the comet. Twelve images were combined together, and a logarithmic stretch was applied to enhance the coma of the comet.

Capturing the Coma

Keep Exploring