This is a very short movie of the asteroid Dinkinesh, which took a long time to make ! It was made from photographs sent back to Earth from the LUCY space probe, as it flew past this intriguing small near-Earth system.
The Lucy mission is currently heading out towards the Trojans – asteroids kept in place by Jupiter’s gravity, and observing the tiny Dinkinesh system was planned as little more than a test for the probes equipment and programming. But Dinkinesh turned out to be a lot more interesting than anybody had dreamed. Not only was it a binary system, sporting a small satellite revolving around the main rock, but the satellite itself turned out to be a binary as well. Very exciting stuff
Claudia Manzoni and I worked on the beautiful pictures sent back to Earth, doing our stereo stuff, but the results were embargoed by NASA until now.
You can read the full story on NASA’s website.
To me, this is amazing stuff, pushing forth the boundaries of human knowledge, and I feel so privileged to be a small part of it it.
Enjoy !!
Bri
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Credit : NASA/GSFC/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab/ Brian May/Claudia Manzoni