An Unusual Perspective

NEAR Shoemaker captured this unusual view of the southwestern wall of Eros' saddle on November 24, 2000, from a 198-kilometer (123-mile) altitude. The camera is pointed west-southwest, looking down the length of the asteroid. The horizon is across the top of the picture. At lower left, the shadowed high terrain east of the saddle blocks the view of the illuminated western wall. The lowest part of the saddle, at the bottom center of the image, is barely illuminated. The dark areas at the very center of the picture and along the right side are in shadow.

Built and managed by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, NEAR was the first spacecraft launched in NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, small-scale planetary missions. See the NEAR web page at http://near.jhuapl.edu/ for more details.