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ChromaDepth
Section III: Space
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Eros: An Irregular Asteroid
Description: The asteroid Eros is one of tens of thousands of "minor planets" in the Solar System. Most asteroids orbit the Sun in a belt between Mars and Jupiter, but Eros
has an oval orbit that puts it between Earth and Mars at its closest point to the Sun. Eros was recently visited by the Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft which orbited
it for 12 months, taking many pictures and gathering scientific data. This computer image was created from a 3-D database that was used by NEAR mission controllers to guide the spacecraft
in close orbits and an eventual landing on the surface of the tiny world..
Things to Notice:
- The largest asteroids are several hundred miles across and are more-or-less spherical, like planets. Eros is about 20 miles long and eight miles thick, and may be a fragment of a larger object that was shattered in a collision.
- Eros comes within 14 million miles of Earth. It is several times larger than the asteroid that many scientists believe wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
- There is no air or water on Eros. In this image, the asteroid's surface appears unrealistically smooth and "weathered" because the computer model does not have the level of detail needed to show fine texture. Eros is actually covered
with thousands of small craters, some only a few feet across.
This 3-D model data was supplied by Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, and JPL.
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