Moonrise above the Pacific During the Earth-skimming fly-by on 4
March 2005, Rosetta's Navigation Cameras captured images looking
down and ahead. While cloud formations, coastlines and
continents are clearly visible, the best photo shows the Moon
rising above the Pacific, taken as the craft headed away from
our home planet and out into space. These images were recorded
before and after closest approach around 22:00 UTC. During this
time, the spacecraft maintained a constant orientation (Moon-
facing) so that earlier views are looking almost directly down,
at the east coast of the USA, while later views — and this
impressive Moonrise image — were taken looking ahead over the
Pacific. The closest approach came at 22:09 UTC at an altitude
of 1954.74 km when Rosetta was over the Pacific, west of Mexico.
All pictures were recorded at 1024 x 1024 pixels and cover a
field of view (FoV) of 5 degrees x 5 degrees. The first image
(above) shows the Moon rising above the Pacific at 22:06 UTC,
just three minutes before the