NEAR image of the day for 2000 Jun 6

The Twilight's Last Gleaming

On June 3, 2000, NEAR Shoemaker's imager took this surrealistic picture of Eros from an orbital altitude of 51 kilometers (32 miles). An unimaginably thin crescent appears almost to hang in space. The thin sliver of light is the far wall of a crater, still sunlit just seconds before sunset. In the foreground, high terrain on Eros' night side blocks all but the uppermost 25 meters (82 feet) of the crater's wall. The whole scene is 2.1 kilometers (1.3 miles) wide.

(Image 0135474710)

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

Feedback to Scott Murchie. Scott.Murchie@jhuapl.edu.