The European Space Agency's (ESA) comet-chasing probe Rosetta has delivered its clearest image of Comet 67P, which shows the satellite's shadow as an added bonus.
According to BBC News, Rosetta snapped the recently released photo on Feb. 14 when it flew by at a distance of about six kilometers. The area of the comet is the bottom and is a patch somewhere in between "Imhotep" and "Ash."
Rosetta is also apparently in between the sun and Comet 67P, close enough for the former to cast the probe's shadow.
"I like it because you get this nice juxtaposition of Rosetta against the alien landscape," Matt Taylor, the mission's project scientist, told BBC News. "We have some lessons learned which we will have to apply to future flybys."
The ESA is still waiting for 67P to get close enough to the sun so the Philae lander can catch some rays and charge its battery enough to turn on and resume its activity. When Rosetta launched the Philae lander, it bounced on the surface and wound up in a region on the comet blocked from the sun.
Philae beamed back as much information as possible before it shut down.
"Images taken from this viewpoint are of high scientific value," OSIRIS Principal Investigator Holger Sierks, of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, said in a press release. "This kind of view is key for the study of grain sizes."
