Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2000 February 24

Stereo Eros
Credit: NEAR Project, JHU APL, NASA

Explanation: Get out your red/blue glasses and float next to asteroid 433 Eros, 260 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 recent images from the NEAR spacecraft processed to yield a stereo anaglyphic view. Along with dramatic chiaroscuro, NEAR's 3-D imaging provides important measurements of the asteroid's landforms and structures, and hopefully clues to the origin of this city-sized chunk of solar system. The smallest features visible here are about 30 meters across.

Tomorrow's picture: Comets of SOHO


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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
NASA Technical Rep.: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA/ GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.