PIA02934: The Southern Saddle (Mosaic)


The Southern Saddle (Mosaic)

Caption:

NEAR Shoemaker captured the southern part of Eros' saddle in this mosaic of seven images taken May 17, 2000, from an altitude of 49 kilometers (30 miles). The two most conspicuous features in this part of the saddle are the wide, curved trough and the bright area in the lower left section. The trough is nearly 400 meters (1,300 feet) across at its widest point, and its curved shape is quite unlike the narrower, linear grooves found elsewhere on Eros. The bright region at the lower left was conspicuous even from thousands of kilometers away, when NEAR Shoemaker took the first pictures of it in December 1998.

Background Info:

Built and managed by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, NEAR was the first spacecraft launched in NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, small-scale planetary missions. See the NEAR web page at http://near.jhuapl.edu/ for more details.

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target 433 Eros
System Near Earth Objects
Target Type Asteroid
Mission NEAR Shoemaker
Instrument Host NEAR Shoemaker
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Multi-Spectral Imager (MSI)
Detector
Extra Keywords Grayscale
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2000-07-06
Date in Caption 2000-05-17
Image Credit NASA/JPL/JHUAPL
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02934
Identifier PIA02934