Large Boulders and Long Shadows in Bennu's North

Large Boulders and Long Shadows in Bennu’s North

This image shows multiple large, similar textured boulders that are located in asteroid Bennu’s northern hemisphere. It was captured at 6:30 a.m. Local Solar Time, so the shadows are long and cast to the left. The image was taken by the PolyCam camera on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on August 2, from a distance of 0.4 miles (0.7 km). The field of view is 33 ft (10 m). For scale, the long, horizontal boulder (right center) is 18 ft (5.5 m) long, which is about the length of a full-size pickup truck. The image was obtained during the mission’s Orbital B phase. When the image was taken, the spacecraft was over the northern hemisphere, pointing PolyCam nearly straight down.

Date Taken: August 2, 2019

Instrument Used: OCAMS (PolyCam)

Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

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Large Boulders and Long Shadows in Bennu’s North

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