image: VIRTIS reveals that comet 67P is very dark, with a surface everywhere rich in organic materials with little or no water ice. In the image, the Earth, the Moon and Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko have been represented showing how they would appear in the same light conditions, taking in account their relative albedos, the percentage of light reflected by the body. The Earth reflects 31 percent of the light, the moon 12 percent and Comet 67P about 6 percent. The images are not to scale physically. The image of Earth was taken by the OSIRIS camera on Rosetta during the spacecraft's last flyby past of our planet in 2009. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Jan. 23, 2015, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by F. Capaccioni at Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) in Rome, Italy, and colleagues was titled, "The organic-rich surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as seen by VIRTIS/Rosetta." view more
Credit: [Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/ UPM/DASP/IDA and Gordan Ugarkovich (Earth); Robert Vanderbei, Princeton University (Moon); ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM (67P/C-G).]