To me this is something pretty stupendous. I’m aware that, although hours of work have gone into these stereos, they won’t be big hitters. Nevertheless, for those who are as fired up by this mission as we are, this will be something to spend a long time marvelling at. My astro stereo partner Claudia Manzoni spotted this opportunity to make what I believe is the first stereo view of the Didymos system following the impact of the DART self-guiding missile on the smaller of the two bodies which make up the Didymos system.
The binary asteroid Didymos is a near-earth possible future impactor on the Earth (low possibility) and it was chosen by the NASA ‘DART’ mission as the site of an experiment to see if we could divert an asteroid by hitting it with a missile. The DART craft destroyed itself on impact so was not able to send us a view of the result. But a tiny Italian ‘cubesat’ was on hand immediately after the event to survey the damage. This is the result. No tricks – no conversions – this is a real sequential stereo – and there’s a lot to be learned from it.
Tell me what you see !
Bri