February 13, 2000
On February 11, 2000 at 15:20 UT, the NEAR imager recorded a most curious observation of Eros. It was late afternoon of that day when I was pulled aside and asked to 'have a look at something'. That something turned out to be the amazing heart-shaped feature that can be seen in today's image-of-the-day, which was taken at a distance of 1609 miles (2590 km). This image has undergone only our standard processing and has not been retouched (except for the arrow drawn on it). The 'heart of Eros' is actually a 5 km long depression in the surface, and it appears as a heart because of an accidental confluence of shadows. The same feature can be discerned in the Eros images from December 1998 but was not as well resolved at that time. It can be seen in the image-of-the-day from December 23, 1998. In that nine-frame montage, the first frame on the left in the bottom row shows the feature clearly, about half way to the upper end of Eros starting from the bright saddle-shaped depression. The three earlier frames and the next frame also show the feature. The saddle-shaped depression may be the largest crater on Eros, but the heart-shaped depression is basically mysterious at this time. By April we should have a much clearer idea as to what it is.Andy Cheng
NEAR Project Scientist
