Cumbrian Sky

The European Space Agency spaceprobe Rosetta has now completed its fly-by of Earth and is heading back out into space. But it sent back some amazing and beautiful pictures before it turned its back on Terra and set course for the dark depths of the solar system once more...

This is a stunning composite of the two high profile shots released so far - the "Earth crescent" image and the "Cities At Night" image...

Why not have a bit of fun with that and, after downloading the high resolution image, try and identify which lights belong to which cities?

Well done ESA on a great success, and for making the fly-by so easy and enjoyable to follow, through the special Blog set up for the event. Many people - and I'm one of them - believe that ESA has a lot to learn about both the value and the necessity of Outreach efforts like that, and the hunger there is "out here" amongst space enthusiasts for images taken by spaceprobes. Compared to NASA, many say - and again I must admit to being one of them - that ESA seems almost reluctant sometimes to release images taken and data gathered during its missions (STILL no sign of the "crescent Mars" images taken during Rosetta's martian fly-by....!!!!) but the blog arranged for this Earth fly-by was a literally HUGE step in the right direction, updated live as soon as anything happened, so we, the observers out here, were made to feel much more a part of the mission. So congratulations to everyone involved!

There should be more Rosetta images to come, so keep an eye on this website for them...

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