This series of pictures was taken as Rosetta approached Lutetia.

The first image in the upper left was taken about 9.5 hours before closest approach, when Rosetta was still 510,000 km (315,000 miles) from the asteroid - more distant than the Moon is from the Earth!

The last image (lower right) was obtained an hour and a half before the close encounter when the probe was still 81,000 km (50,000 miles) from Lutetia.

In the first image, details only about 20 km (12 miles) across can be seen, but that improves by almost a factor of 10 in the last image!

Credit: ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team. MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA