Astronomy Picture of the Day - Stereo Eros

APOD.NASA.gov ^ | 13 Feb, 2021 | Image Credit: NEAR Project, JHU APL, NASA

[MtnClimber]

Explanation: Get out your red/blue glasses and float next to asteroid 433 Eros. Orbiting the Sun once every 1.8 years, the near-Earth asteroid is named for the Greek god of love. Still, its shape more closely resembles a lumpy potato than a heart. Eros is a diminutive 40 x 14 x 14 kilometer world of undulating horizons, craters, boulders and valleys. Its unsettling scale and unromantic shape are emphasized in this mosaic of images from the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft processed to yield a stereo anaglyphic view. Along with dramatic chiaroscuro, NEAR Shoemaker'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. Beginning on February 14, 2000, historic NEAR Shoemaker spent a year in orbit around Eros, the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid. Twenty years ago, on February 12 2001, it landed on Eros, the first ever landing on an asteroid's surface. NEAR Shoemaker's final transmission from the surface of Eros was on February 28, 2001.

[MtnClimber]

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For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.

[MtnClimber]

[MtnClimber]

Pinging the APOD list.

🪐 🌟 🌌

[BobL]

Maybe it’s just me, but that asteroid certainly looks gay.

[ETL]

It’s just you, Bob.

:)

[ETL]

[BobL]

“It’s just you, Bob.”

You’re probably right. I just can’t get that damn ‘Lincoln Project’ out of my mind.

[ETL]

Eros, the gay space potato

[Larry Lucido]

So if you rolled a bowling ball down from the top of the hill toward the left, how far would it roll? Half way down? All the way down? Would it keep rolling around the “pole”? Would it roll off into space?

[MtnClimber]

Would it hurt if it hit you on the head.

[ETL]

?

[Larry Lucido]

I’d be okay long as I got a spare.

[Old Yeller]

Maybe it’s just me, but that asteroid certainly looks gay.

If it were, it would be targeting Uranus.

[BobL]

“If it were, it would be targeting Uranus.”

Naa, I doubt it. Not after a couple of surgeries.
(I’ll stop there)

[DannyTN]

It’s not gay there’s just nothing Eros about it.

[Red Badger]

[Red Badger]

[Larry Lucido]

Well, I definitely won’t be golfing on it. Too many divots.

[Red Badger]

You might get a hole in one.......................

[Larry Lucido]

Pallas. The golf ball asteroid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Pallas