It seems like everyone is getting on the 3-D bandwagon these days, including scientists. Last week, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) released a new 3-D video of the giant asteroid Vesta created by Ralf Jaumann of the German Aerospace Center using data from the Dawn spacecraft’s first two months orbiting the small world. Of course, it’s best to view the movie with those funny red-blue glasses if you have a pair, but the clip is still interesting even if you don’t — especially as it includes commentary by Carol Raymond, Dawn’s deputy principal investigator at JPL.
The video highlights a global view of Vesta and its mysterious equatorial band of ridges and troughs, three young craters dubbed the “Snowman” in the asteroid’s northern hemisphere, and a massive mountain at Vesta’s south pole that’s more than twice the height of Mt. Everest. Dawn has been orbiting Vesta since July 15 and is currently spiraling down to its low-altitude mapping orbit, which will bring the spacecraft within about 130 miles (210 kilometers) of the asteroid’s surface.
Dawn has already provided an extensive amount of new data about the 330-mile-wide (530km) asteroid, but it’s kind of fun to see the information in a new way. I hope this won’t be the last 3-D video of Vesta we get before Dawn moves on to the asteroid Ceres in July 2012. The cinematic equivalent might give me a headache in theaters sometimes, but 3-D imagery is pretty cool when it shows off new views of an unfamiliar world.
Embedded video from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology