Comet bomber flyby pics show spaceball belching ancient dry ice

Excellent snaps sent back by a NASA probe craft during a rendezvous with the comet Hartley 2 have revealed that the spectacular "jets" of glowing gas which make it so spectacular result from dry ice subliming in its interior. The nucleus of comet Hartley 2 belching dry ice, imaged by the EPOXI spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL- …

[TheRealRoland]

Funny, those descriptions...

Other 'meedja' talked about bowling pins, and the best one, chicken drumstick... Hmmmm.... chicken....

[Fizzle]

Comet? I think not!

What a load of twaddle! It's stating the bleedin' obvious that those are landing lights coming from a rather dusty spaceship and not a comet at all.

I dunno, blinkin' scientists! What do they know eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly enough...

When I saw the picture I was immediately reminded of the cover to one of the paperback versions of Issac Asimov's Foundation stories. (Specifically: "Second Foundation", and the cover is on the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series))

I'm having that sort of day...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re : AC, "Oddly Enough"

Spot on! I thought it was familiar, but my original copy is up in the attic, so I couldn't check.

[Peter Simpson 1]

If you look at the photo really closely

you can just make out "WASH ME" written in the dust on the rear window...

//the one with the squegee in the pocket, thanks

[RichyS]

Great name

Professor Jessica Sunshine.

What a fabulous name. Especially for a NASA scientistic. Perhaps she's studying the wrong celestial body though...

[Camilla Smythe]

Sits in Awe

Thinking about how something so old still has dry ice left in itself in order to create pretty pictures....

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda beats the crap out of religion

don't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

@ac

""Kinda beats the crap out of religion"

Why would you think that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Cause everything beats the crap out of religion.

[Mike Flugennock]

"Kinda beats the crap out of religion"

an Anonymous Coward sez at 13:27gmt on 11.12.10:

"Why would you think that?"

I can answer that. It beats the crap out of religion because it's something that's _real_ that's awesome in a _real_ Universe, not some made-up Invisible Guy In The Sky who millions believe in on "faith", not through any real _proof_.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Kinda beats the crap out of religion?

Pretty lame trolling attempt, I'm afraid.

But it would be interesting if you posted it in response to every single article about everything.

Or maybe not.

[Zimmer]

Obvious tax dodge

Advanced civilization binds unwanted CO2 into rock and hurls it into space to amass many Carbon Credits :)

[corestore]

I don't believe you.

"Professor Jessica Sunshine"??

You made that up. Admit it.

[Mike Flugennock]

"Professor Jessica Sunshine"

corestore sez:

"You made that up. Admit it."

Nope, that name's for real. I saw her at the EPOXi press conference on NASA TV. There it was, in the caption, clear as day.

I'm guessing mixed Native American parentage, as some years back, I worked on a project with a guy named Dave Pretty Eagle. My first guess was old hippie parentage, but that's _everybody's_ first guess, so I threw that one out.

[AlistairJ]

That's tremendous

No sexy space vampires though?

[frank ly]

Nominative Determinism?

I think it's very appropriate that Professor Sunshine is studying the effects of solar heating on comets.

[Code Monkey]

The Sky at Night

The Sky at Night covered Hartley rather well, too. It's available on iPlayer.

Great article...

[Michael Thibault]

How (often) does this happen?

Jessica Sunshine is a comet-watcher...

"Is this real-life?"

[Sureo]

So,...

...comets have a global warming problem too?

[Jan 0]

Comet bomber?

For a moment I thought the MoD were repurposing the Nimrod:)

Wonderfull images! Thanks for alerting us to them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh bugger!

I guess that means that we will have greenpeace and their ilk whinging on about banning comets because of CO2 solar system climate change.

[asiaseen]

Ominous credit

at the bottom of that NASA page: "ExpectMore.gov".