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    How the Rosetta space probe brings a distant comet into vivid focus

    In 2004, the European Space Agency (ESA) sent the Rosetta space probe to explore the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, located beyond the asteroid belt, more than five times the Earth’s distance from the Sun. In 2014, the orbiter finally reached the comet, and a lander touched down on its nucleus – a first in human history – where it briefly gathered data before losing battery power. In this video, the Austrian filmmaker and photographer Christian Stangl pays tribute to Rosetta’s historic journey, digitally enhancing some of the 400,000 images released by ESA after the mission to create a remarkably vivid and visceral tour of the alien astral body.

    Director: Christian Stangl

    Composer: Wolfgang Stangl

    12 September 2019
    A group of people in an office celebrating with smiles and high-fives, standing near computer monitors.

    videoSpace exploration

    What it’s like to land on a comet 300 million miles away

    4 minutes

    Black-and-white photo of a Mars rover on a rocky terrain with its shadow casting across the ground, taken from the rover’s perspective.

    videoSpace exploration

    What the Martian surface looked like to Oppy – humanity’s most resilient rover

    2 minutes

    Photo of the Earth taken from the Moon, reflected in a camera lens with ‘Carl Zeiss’ text visible on the lens casing.

    videoAstronomy

    How an unplanned picture from Apollo 8 altered humanity’s perspective of Earth

    30 minutes

    Overhead view of rugged terrain with deep channels and ridges resembling erosion patterns.

    videoSpace exploration

    A tour of Mars assembled from NASA images reveals a wondrous but uninviting planet

    5 minutes

    Saturn’s rings with a small moon visible in the blackness of space on the right, taken from a spacecraft.

    videoAstronomy

    Imagery from Saturn becomes a breathtaking glimpse of a neighbouring world

    2 minutes

    Image of Saturn’s rings and its largest moon, Titan, with cloud cover, as captured from space.

    videoSpace exploration

    Burning ice, metal clouds, gemstone rain – tour the strangest known exoplanets

    31 minutes

    A satellite orbiting Earth with the Sun rising above the planet’s horizon and clouds visible below the spacecraft.

    videoSpace exploration

    Embark on an interstellar, operatic adventure with the Voyager spacecrafts

    15 minutes

    A dark sky with numerous stars and a bright, luminous object emitting light in the centre.

    videoAstronomy

    Celebrating the rough, the raw and the human in hardcore space science

    3 minutes

    Abstract image with bright swirls and specks of light in pink, purple and black, resembling a cosmic or nebula scene.

    videoChemistry

    As above, so below – an artist finds the cosmos in a microscopic chemical reaction

    6 minutes