[Arizoni]

After looking at the photos of the moon landing it reminded me of some photos that are truly mind blowing.  At least to me.

Several years ago the Rosetta Mission craft locked into orbit around a comet named Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

It sent a lander to the surface and many photos of the comet from both the orbiting craft and a few from the lander (that didn't exactly have a soft landing).

The comet didn't look anything like I pictured a comet.
I have always envisioned a big ball of ice.
Below is what this comet really looks like.

Here's a link to a video showing some animation and a lot of actual footage along with some links to other stories about this incredable encounter.

http://www.space.com/27697-rosetta-comet-landing-full-coverage.html

http://www.space.com/27740-rosetta-comet-landing-success.html

By the way.  The gravitational attraction of this 3 1/2 km long object is so small, you would weigh about the same standing on it as a paper clip does here on earth.

The red circle in the top photo shows where the lander ended up after bouncing twice off of the surface.

[tooseevee]

After looking at the photos of the moon landing it reminded me of some photos that are truly mind blowing.  At least to me.

Several years ago the Rosetta Mission craft locked into orbit around a comet named Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
The comet didn't look anything like I pictured a comet.
I have always envisioned a big ball of ice.

            Yes, they're amazing pictures, aren't they?

             It makes me chuckle that we can do something like this and yet still some of us mere humans can't keep a bike battery charged overnight without a seminar or therapy. Sometimes I want to scream (after reading the back and forth for a week) "Your batree's dead! Get a new one! Get a tender"!

              Concerning composition: I don't think there's any new indication here that it ISn't ice. Is there? Or did you just mean that it doesn't "look like" an ice ball like we could make here on Earth?

[Arizoni]

I always pictured a comet to look sorta like a large very dirty blob of frozen icy like stuff composed of water, methane and other solidified gasses looking  sort of like a snow cone of shaved ice that fell into the mud.
I expected it would be somewhat irregular shaped but it would have gently rounded edges caused by any sharp irregularity evaporating or "boiling off" from the effects of the solar radiation and solar wind. 
I expected to see some impact craters and there are some but I expected to see the edges of them rather rounded off like one would see if they dropped a ball bearing into a bowl of gently sifted flour.

The very distinct, sharp, rock like surfaces shown all over the body of the comet in the photos was not what I expected to see.

Having read a bit about this comet, it's density is very low signifying a lot of open or very loosely compacted material.  This was verified by reports from the lander which was measuring the strength of the radio signals from the orbiter.  As the orbiter passed around the back side of the comet from where the lander is resting the signals did not decrease as much as they would if the comet was more solid.

Some of the photos taken as the comet approached the sun show the outgassing from the surface but it isn't at all like the surface was evaporating.  Rather, it shows localized jets of gas being expelled from vents.

Check them out in some of the more recent photos in the links I gave.

[Adrian II]

Is that similar to the one the killed us all on 9/23? 

A.