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The
Asteroid 243 Ida and its Moon Dactyl
This
color picture is made from images taken from the Galileo spacecraft
about 14 minutes before its closest approach to asteroid 243 Ida
on August 28, 1993. The range from the spacecraft was about 10,500
kilometers (6,500 miles). The images used are from the sequence
in which Ida's moon was originally discovered; the tiny moon is
visible to the right of the asteroid. The color is "enhanced"
in the sense that the CCD camera is sensitive to near infrared wavelengths
of light beyond human vision; a "natural" color picture
of this asteroid would appear mostly gray.
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