Ida and Dactyl in enhanced color (distant view)

Filed under pretty pictures, amateur image processing, asteroids, asteroid 243 Ida and Dactyl, Galileo

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Ida and Dactyl in enhanced color (distant view)

Galileo took the three images for this enhanced-color view of asteroid 143 Ida and its satellite Dactyl on August 28, 1993 at about 15:22 UTC, about 90 minutes before its closest approach. Galileo was about 67,000 kilometers from the asteroid at the time

NASA / JPL / color composite by Emily Lakdawalla

The images have been resized to 200 percent of their original size. Three images of Ida taken through infrared, green, and violet filters were combined to make this composite view. In the time that elapsed between each frame, Ida rotated, so the green and infrared images had to be warped to match the violet-filter image in order for them to overlap.

Copyright holder: Emily Lakdawalla

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder. Original image data dated on or about August 28, 1993