This image shows comet Tempel 1 before Deep Impact's probe smashed into its surface. It is a composite of images taken by the probe's impactor targeting sensor. The Sun is to the right of the image and reveals terrain varying in brightness by a factor of two. Shadows and bright areas indicate surface topography. Smooth regions with no features (lower left and upper right) are probably younger than rougher areas with circular features, which are probably impact craters. The probe crashed between the two dark-rimmed craters near the center and bottom of the comet.

The comet nucleus is estimated to be about 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) across and 7 (4.3 miles) kilometers tall.

This composite image was built up from scaling all images to 5 meters/pixel, and aligning images to fixed points. Each image at closer range, replaced equivalent locations observed at a greater distance. The impact site has the highest resolution because images were acquired until about 4 sec from impact or a few meters from the surface.

In the annotated version (see "Other versions" below), arrows a and b point to large, smooth regions. The impact site is indicated by the third large arrow. Small arrows highlight a scarp that is bright due to illumination angle, which shows the smooth area to be elevated above the extremely rough terrain. The scale bar is 1 km and the two arrows above the nucleus point to the sun and the rotational axis of the nucleus. Celestial north is near the rotational pole.