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The first true color image of comet 67P taken by the Rosetta spacecraft

jesusdiaz
Jesus Diaz
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Illustration for article titled The first true color image of comet 67P taken by the Rosetta spacecraft

Until now, all photos of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko have been in greyscale. According to a research paper that will be presented at the American Geophysical Union's 2014 Fall Meeting, you are looking at its first true color photo, taken with Rosetta's OSIRIS camera.

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The reason why the image is blurred is because the comet moved between exposures, as a Reddit user showed by separating the RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) channels in the composite color image and making this animated GIF:

Here's the same photo sharpened and color corrected, made by another Redditor:

Illustration for article titled The first true color image of comet 67P taken by the Rosetta spacecraft
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For reference, this is a color photo of Mars taken by Rosetta's OSIRIS camera using the same multiple exposure technique:

Illustration for article titled The first true color image of comet 67P taken by the Rosetta spacecraft
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DISCUSSION

SheriffTruman
SheriffTruman

So, I am a HUGE fan and cheerleader for this mission, but we are to understand that the top photo, that looks less that great is being presented with a research paper, while the lower one was corrected in a pretty obvious (I don't use Photoshop and it made perfect sense to me) way to look much better by some random dude on Reddit in his spare time?

Is there some reason the research paper has to have an uncorrected photo or something?