Steins, in color

Filed under global views, amateur image processing, asteroids, asteroid 2867 Steins, Rosetta and Philae

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Global view of asteroid 2867 Steins as seen by Rosetta on September 5, 2008, processed by Daniel Machacek.

ESA / OSIRIS Team MPS / UPD / LAM / IAA / RSSD / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA / Daniel Machacek

Rosetta's Narrow-Angle Camera went into safe mode just ten minutes prior to the spacecraft's closest approach to the asteroid on September 5, 2008. These views of Steins were composed of the last set of those images taken before the safing event, from a distance of about 5,400 kilometers. (All three are the same view, just presented with different brightness and contrast to make different features visible.)

Daniel Machacek produced a superresolution view of the asteroid using five OSIRIS Narrow-Angle Camera frames, representing 250% of the original camera resolution, and added color from four of those frames, originally posting the image to unmannedspaceflight.com.

Copyright holder: Daniel Macháček

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 September 5, 2008