Remembering Remembrance Day – and – Giant Boulder on Asteroid Bennu

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Once upon a time this happened. A monumental moment at the Albert Hall on Remembrance Day 2010. Kerry triumphs here, in partnership with some guitarist bloke, who did the arrangement.  You can see Kerry perform this great song – Anthem from Chess – live on tour right now as special guest of Collabro.  Check Kerry’s website for dates list.

And if you want to see the whole of this performance:


https://youtu.be/o6HVSlD3rYw

Giant Boulder on the Asteroid BENNU. The NASA OSIRIS REX mission today (27 March) released this stereo capture of part of Bennu’s surface.

I’m proud to have been adopted as a collaborator on the Osiris Rex team, along with my colleague Claudia Manzoni. Our passion is producing stereoscopic (3-D) images from the astounding data that the OR mission has been collecting. Special thanks to mission PI, Prof Dante Loretta, for making this possible.

These stereo images can be enjoyed in various ways – as Anaglyphs, for which red and green spectacles are needed, or, as here, configuring the two images side my side, for either cross-eyed free-viewing (as here) or parallel free viewing, or, for the most immersive experience, using a stereoscope such as our own LondonStereoscopic Company OWL.

More information on all this is at www.LondonStereo.com.

Giant Boulder on Asteroid Bennu - 2 stereo pairsGiant Boulder on Asteroid Bennu - 2 stereo pairs
Giant Boulder on Asteroid Bennu – 2 stereo pairs

The technique used for making astro stereo images is to find two images captured from slightly different angles of view, giving just enough of a ‘baseline’ between viewpoints to enable our brains to perceive a stereoscopic experience. This is achieved by presenting the two images separately to our left and right eyes. The most difficult part is then ususally trying to deal with the fact that the twe images have different illuminations. To solve this problem, this pair was skilfully assembled by Claudia, the two images being chosen from two occasions on separate orbits when the angle of view was different, but the phase angle of the Sun was the same. This means I had much less work to do to polish the stereo image into a form which pleases the eyes. 

Enjoy Bennu in 3-D. And the boulder, which the team have christened BenBen.

 Bri

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