Suggested Searches

1 Min Read

Sunny Side of a Comet

This image composite shows comet Tempel 1 in infrared light . The infrared picture highlights the warm, or sunlit, side of the comet, where NASA's Deep Impact probe later hit.
PIA02132
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD

Description

Figure 1: Temperature Map
Figure 1: Temperature Map

This image composite shows comet Tempel 1 in visible (left) and infrared (right) light (figure 1). The infrared picture highlights the warm, or sunlit, side of the comet, where NASA's Deep Impact probe later hit. These data were acquired about six minutes before impact. The visible image was taken by the medium-resolution camera on the mission's flyby spacecraft, and the infrared data were acquired by the flyby craft's infrared spectrometer.