Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

On November 4th the Deep Impact spacecraft passed inside of 500 miles from the nucleus of Comet Hartley 2.  The image below is the first of 5 images released by NASA after the close pass.  There are more images to come including some high resolution images.  Thanks to Arecibo radio telescope radar images last week we knew this comet had a nucleus with an odd shape.   That wasn’t the half of it.

Comet Hartley 2 Medium resolution image. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD

Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society Blog has some more images and some thoughts on the origin of this celestial “dog bone” Here, here and here.