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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.

See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.

Stereo Eros

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.

Date February 24, 2000
Credit Credit: NEAR Project , JHU APL , NASA
Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U.