Animation showing the behaviour of water-ice observed in the neck region of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko between 1 August 2014 and 10 February 2015 by Rosetta’s VIRTIS instrument, when the comet-Sun separation decreased from 542 million km to 352 million km.. <br />The blue regions indicate the presence of ice in the uppermost surface layer; red shows no ice; and grey indicates portions of the comet that were in shadow. <br /> <br />The animation shows the ice abundance at each time during the comet's 12.4 hour day, such that each data point represents the average, for a particular hour of the comet day, over the entire time period August-February.
