back to article I fart in your general direction! Comet 67P lets rip on Europe's Rosetta probe

Scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) got lucky when the Rosetta probe, currently orbiting Comet 67P, picked up a massive outgassing from the frozen body. On February 19, the comet suddenly started to emit dust and gas in an unprecedented display, as Rosetta was orbiting 35 kilometers away. Nine of the probe's …

  1. Michael Habel

    #driveby

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Did nobody notice...?

      Not El Reg's fault, apart from not noticing either, but the 'Boffins pinpoint landslide spot' photo is a bit fscked up - there are two serious problems with this image.

      The first, and immediately obvious, problem is that the 'zoomed' area shown in the right-hand half of the image simply doesn't match the indicated area in the full image.

      The second problem only becomes apparent when you follow the link to ESA page about this event. At the top of the ESA page is an eight frame .GIF sequence of the outburst where you can clearly see that it occurs on the opposite 'inner face' of the larger lobe, close to where the two lobes join, and not on the 'outer face' surface of the larger lobe, as the 'landslide spot' image would have us believe.

      Now the blame for this falls squarely upon the ESA - El Reg simply lifted the landslide spot pic from the ESA web page - but I can't figure out why the ESA would use such a misleading bogus image in the first place.

      1. ratfox

        Re: Did nobody notice...?

        My assumption about the zoom not matching the larger picture: those are two pictures taken at different times, which means the lighting is different. The reason they didn't simply zoom the larger image is that it would mean crap resolution, so instead they used a different picture taken with different optics.

        Or maybe they simply didn't have a larger picture showing where the zoom is, and they just put any old picture.

      2. crimelovingfunster

        Re: Did nobody notice...?

        It looks like a butt crack...

        Tee hee hee!

  2. frank ly

    Atum region

    So it was a burp, not the other one.

  3. Winkypop Silver badge
    Alien

    Bin night?

    67P denizens need to toss their garbage somewhere.

  4. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

    triggered by a landslide at the surface, rather than a more focused jet bringing fresh material up from within the interior,

    More like a shower of dandruff than a fart, then?

  5. Crisp

    "Some of the dust was moving so fast it registered as trails..."

    What the hell has Comet 67P been eating?

    1. Mark 85

      Re: "Some of the dust was moving so fast it registered as trails..."

      Beans, beans, the musical fruit... ????

  6. Alister

    Your mother was a punch card reader and your father smelt of static C libraries

    Oh come on!

    "Your father smelt of Raspberry Pi" surely?

  7. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    WTF?

    A landslide ?

    Comets can have landslides.

    My mind is blown.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    hmmm...

    is that a stream of bat's piss?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They also picked up a signal from Philae reporting that it is merely suffering from a minror scratch and and a flesh wound

  10. JJKing

    No damage done to the comet as any dents will puff out.

    1. James Hughes 1

      Disappointing lack of upvotes or comments on that joke.

  11. JetSetJim
    Pint

    Beer

    ...for the sub head. That is all

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Frozen Frobscottle!

    Hurrah! It's finally thawing, so we can all start PhilaeWhizzing...

  13. PeeKay
    Joke

    If they follow standard asteroid procedure they'll dump their garbage before they go deep solar...

  14. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

    Was that cloud....

    Philaes' Fogg

  15. Yer Mother You Will

    The Register is posting so much BULLSHIT these days, mostly propaganda set to whip up the usual negative thoughts in the thick, the dumb and the mostly stupid public. I thin it's about time I started to pay for REAL science news and subscribe to the various science journals such as....

    https://www.newscientist.com/ or https://royalsociety.org/journals/ or https://www.ibms.org/go/media/publications/british-journal-biomedical-science or https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/Journals or www.scientific-journals.co.uk/ or http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl or www.freefullpdf.com/

    I want to read real science, not this puerile mug capturing rubbish that says everything about the author, someone so poor at his job that he/she has to write such garbage, someone so inept he or she cannot obtain employment as a proper science journalist.

    Personally, I wouldn't put this guy in charge of a wheelbarrow. My account is now being closed.

  16. BuckeyeB

    They were lucky that the instruments were all pointing at the comet at that time? I thought that was the point.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon