Explanation:
Get out your
red/blue
glasses and float next to asteroid
433
Eros, now over 220 million kilometers away!
Orbiting the Sun once every 1.8 earth-years,
asteroid
Eros is a diminutive 40 x 14 x 14 kilometer
world of undulating horizons,
craters, boulders and valleys.
Its unsettling scale and bizarre shape are emphasized in
this
picture - a mosaic of images from the
NEAR Shoemaker
spacecraft processed to yield a
stereo anaglyphic
view.
Along with
dramaticchiaroscuro,
NEAR's 3-D imaging provided important measurements
of the asteroid's landforms and structures, and
clues to the origin of this city-sized chunk of
solar system.
The smallest features visible here are about 30 meters across.
After spending a year in orbit around Eros,
the historic Near Shoemaker spacecraft made the first ever
landing on an asteroid's surface
February 12, 2001.
