NASA's Deep Impact mission to study comet Tempel 1 was a great success. This spectacular image shows the splash of light created by the collision of the impactor spacecraft with the comet at a speed of 37,000 km/h. The image was taken by the high-resolution camera of the fly-by craft only 67 s after the impact on 4 July 2005. Linear spokes of light radiate away from the impact site, while reflected sunlight illuminates most of the comet surface. The bright splash is due to scattered light from the collision, which saturated the detector.
The image reveals topographic features, including ridges, scalloped edges and possibly impact craters formed long ago. The impactor spacecraft hit the surface of the comet at probably 20-45° above the horizontal. Mission scientists infer that the crater created by the impact was larger than 100 m in diameter, but they have not yet been able to tease out an image of this crater from behind the cloud of ejecta.