First Images From the AnneFrank Flyby

Cujo writes "The first images from the Stardust spacecraft's flyby of the asteroid AnneFrank can be see here among other places. It's been a while since we've had an asteroid flyby, although Deep Space 1 flew by Comet Borrelly about 13 months ago."

Comments

They messed up their experiment.

[Trusty Penfold]

The article says they used their dust collectors.

Now, when it gets back to Earth, how will they know which particles came from AnneFrank and which came from Wild 2?

Re:They messed up their experiment.

[Trusty Penfold]

It also says

It turned out that we were approaching the asteroid's night side, and since all asteroids are different shapes, you can't definitively say which side will be light and which side will be dark.

Erm, the side pointing towards the sun will be light, the other side will be dark.

They do know where their probe is in relation to the Sun, don't they??

Re:They messed up their experiment.

[avalys]

Perhaps they can switch between different storage areas.

Obligatory Anne Frank joke

[L. VeGas]

I'm a little surprised that it got any pictures. I hear that the asteroid is very good at hiding.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[jakobk]

This is not funny at all.

from the duck dept.

[Dannon]

I always thought that the /. editors were a little quackers. Don't get me wrong, though, I've never accused them of fowl play.

*ducks and runs!*

thanks

[zogger]

--thanks woulda missed this story. neat pic. Sorta going hmmm over their allusion to it's size "same size as the one killed off the dinosaurs". In astrotech speek I guess this means "a whopper". The mother of all kabooms if one hit. Wonder what the energy level would be mesured as? what size earthquakes would it make, or tsunamis or whatever? The math is beyond me I'll admit, some place between gee whizz and aww %^&*t.

News update....

[McFly69]

This just in.... the picture take is picture of a dust particle on the camera lense and not of a dust partical in space.