When it comes to the images shown here, with the Bennu sample safely delivered to world Earth, the curation team made it simple for us. In the minutes when the TAGSAM head was flipped over after removing it from the avionics deck at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston, photographs from lots of angles were captured, allowing us to discover just one (nearly!) ideal pair, revealing the intimate structure of simply a few grains of the dark, coal-black sample.
Its possible to see this side-by-side stereoscopic pair without a stereoscope, by unwinding the axes of the eyes, as if looking through the screen to infinity. But the very best experience will be had by utilizing a stereoscope, the exact same way the OSIRIS-REx objective team viewed our stereo images while the search was on to find a safe area on asteroid Bennus surface for the delicate Touch-and-Go tasting maneuver.
The biggest “stones” in this photo have to do with 1 centimeter throughout. Enjoy this piece of history in the making!
These stereoscopic images are a pair of close-ups of ancient asteroid Bennu product obtained by NASAs OSIRIS-REx mission and delivered to Earth on September 24, 2023. To do this, we looked for pairs of images of Bennus surface area taken from perspectives some range apart. In the case of the images shown here, with the Bennu sample safely delivered to planet Earth, the curation team made it easy for us.
These stereoscopic images are a set of close-ups of ancient asteroid Bennu product obtained by NASAs OSIRIS-REx mission and provided to Earth on September 24, 2023. The material is on top of the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism), the instrument utilized to collect the sample from the asteroid in 2020. The sample and TAGSAM are presently in a clean room within the Astromaterials Curation Facility at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: Erika Blumenfeld, Joseph Abersold for the initial images/Brian May, Claudia Manzoni for stereo processing of the images.
NASAs OSIRIS-REx mission, while not at first planned for stereoscopic imaging, benefited from the competence of Brian May and Claudia Manzoni, who made use of the objectives large visual data to create 3D images of asteroid Bennu.
Making stereoscopic images of asteroid Bennu was not part of the quick of NASAs OSIRIS-REx objective; however we civilians, Claudia Manzoni and myself (Brian May, Queen guitarist and astrophysicist), were welcomed by mission primary investigator Dante Lauretta to join the science group and discover chances for stereoscopy in the wealth of visual information gotten by the spacecrafts cameras at Bennu.
To do this, we looked for pairs of pictures of Bennus surface taken from viewpoints some distance apart. This separation of perspectives, called the “baseline,” has to be perfect to provide us the experience of depth and truth when the images are viewed stereoscopically. Such viewing requires the left and best images to be provided separately to our left and best eyes, which is how we see in “reality.” When this is done, the little distinctions between the parts of the stereo set– known as parallax distinctions– offer our brains the chance to instantly view depth and solidity in the image.
