.
The Pleiades satellites spotted Philae in the middle of the Nile, south of the city of Aswan. Not the robot course, but the Egyptian island that gave it its name. Can you find it? Temples transferred to the island of Agilkia are easier to identify.
Philae was shaped like a little bird. On this Pleiades image taken in October 2012, we guess the contours (see picture caption below). This is the beautiful, nicknamed the "Pearl of Egypt", was swallowed up by 2 times: following downstream the construction of the first Aswan Dam (visible in the image) by the British between 1894 and 1902 and the upstream construction of 2nd dam, "the Aswan High Dam," completed in 1970 under the leadership of President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
.
In ancient times, the island of Philae was quite different. Place of pilgrimage, it housed a shrine to the goddess Isis. The beauty of the sunken temples motivated, in the 1970s, achieving a "pharaonic" project moving, stone by stone, ancient buildings on the island Agilkia (sometimes also spelled Aguilkia) at 300 m northwest of Philae.
To accommodate the ancient buildings, the island Agilkia was leveled on about thirty meters and remodeled to give it the original form of oiselle of the island of Philae. Today the island Agilkia often renamed Philae, is a popular tourist destination. A sound and light show even gives life to his temples during the starry nights.
As for the robot Philae on its comet, he landed as planned on the site called Agilkia it then bounced, bounced ... and is now stuck along the wall of the "great depression" of tchouri. Name the Egyptian resonances would not it find? Any ideas?
.
L'image Pléiades légendée. Crédits : CNES 2012, Distribution Airbus DS/Spot Image.
.
Did you know? The name of the Rosetta probe refers to the Rosetta Stone, a stone fragment found in the Egyptian city ... Rosetta. Wearing 3 versions of the same text, this stone has enabled Champollion in the early 19th century to decipher the hieroglyphs. An obelisk found on the island of Philae also helped Champollion to solve their mystery. A Rosetta - and Philae - to decipher the comets!
.
Quelle: CNES
4157 Views