A Stunning Animation Created From Photos of a Heavy Snowstorm Falling on Comet 67P in 2016

Using photos from the Rosetta Osiris Archive Image Browser, Twitter user landru79 created an amazing animation of an incredible snowstorm falling upon Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in June 2016. YouTuber Phil Plait (The Bad Astronomer) further manipulated the animation by repeating images and adjusting the speed for a longer video.

As the spacecraft moves around the comet we see the landscape change, but you can also see stars moving in the background, and flakes of ice and dust much closer to the spacecraft flying around! It’s like something from an old movie, *but it’s real*. I took his original animate GIF and repeated it; the first two clips are at fast speed, the next two at medium, and the last two at slow speed, so you can track what’s going on.

#ROSETTA ? OSIRIS #67P/CHURYUMOV-GERASIMENKO new albums ?–ROSETTA EXTENSION 2 MTP030– Miércoles 1 Junio 2016 all filters stacked pic.twitter.com/Bf173Z5g79

— landru79 (@landru79) April 23, 2018

Plait also created another version in which the video was stabilized in alignment with the stars in order to show the movement of the comet.

but with the video stabilized to keep the stars fixed, and the comet moving. This allows you to see the stars better

Plait explained his process in great detail for ScyFiWire.