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Emily Lakdawalla • Feb 15, 2011

Quick-and-dirty animation of Stardust Tempel 1 images through closest approach

EDIT FEB 17: There's a final version at full resolution and with 61 frames here.

EDIT 13:35 PST: The first version has been supplanted with a new version containing 9 more frames.


Here's a quick-and-dirty animated GIF of the 30 39 images of Tempel 1 that have arrived on Earth so far from Stardust. I've put a big watermark on this animation because it's not a final product. I'll have better versions later, with more images, better aligned, and so forth. But I wanted to share this with you all since it shows the flyby so well! The frames from after closest approach contain new territory not seen by Deep Impact. It looks like this website is getting images posted quickest, so I'm watching there for more images.

Stardust's flight past Tempel 1 (version 2)
Stardust's flight past Tempel 1 (version 2) This animation consists of 39 images of Tempel 1 taken by Stardust during its flyby on February 15, 2011. The images have been rotated 180 degrees (so that illumination appears to be coming from above) and roughly aligned. This is an interim product and will be supplanted by later versions as more images are released by the Stardust team. It's shown here at half its full resolution.Image: NASA / JPL / Cornell / animation by Emily Lakdawalla

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