Dinkinesh Image Gallery
Images - Diagrams - Team Photos
Images
The “moonrise” of the satellite, Selam, as it emerges from behind asteroid Dinkinesh as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI), one of the most detailed images returned by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft during its flyby of the asteroid binary. This image was taken at 12:55 EDT (1655 UTC) Nov. 1, 2023, within a minute of closest approach, from a range of approximately 270 miles (430 km). From this perspective, the satellite is behind the primary asteroid. The image has been sharpened and processed to enhance contrast.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab
The asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI) as NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft departed the system. This image was taken at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 UTC) Nov. 1, 2023, about 6 minutes after closest approach, from a range of approximately 1,010 miles (1,630 km). From this perspective, the satellite is revealed to be a contact binary, the first time a contact binary has been seen orbiting another asteroid.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL
Lucy’s high-resolution imager, L’LORRI, was able to first image Dinkinesh (circled) on September 3, 2023. The spacecraft used these images shown here to help the spacecraft navigate towards the asteroid for the November 1 encounter.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL
A false-color image of the asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite, Selam, created using data collected by the NASA Lucy spacecraft’s color imager, the Multi-spectral Visible Imaging Camera, MVIC, on the L’Ralph instrument. This MVIC image was obtained about 100 seconds before closest approach on Nov. 1, 2023. The orange, green and violet MVIC filters were mapped to the red, green, and blue channels to create this image.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI
Time-lapse movie of Lucy’s encounter with asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite, Selam, as seen by Lucy’s T2CAM – annotated version.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SWRI/ASU/MSSS
Time-lapse movie of Lucy’s encounter with asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite, Selam, as seen by Lucy’s Terminal Tracking Camera (T2CAM)
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SWRI/ASU/MSSS
Time-lapse movie of Lucy’s encounter with asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite, Selam. These images were taken with the L’LORRI instrument during the approximately three hours around closest approach.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL
A series of images of the binary asteroid pair, Dinkinesh and Selam, as seen by the terminal tracking camera (T2CAM) on NASA’s Lucy spacecraft during its closest approach on Nov. 1, 2023. The images were taken 13 seconds apart. The apparent motion of the two asteroids is due to the motion of the spacecraft as it flew past at 10,000 mph (4.5 km/s). These images have been sharpened and processed to enhance contrast.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/ASU
Stereograms
Use Red-Blue glasses for a 3D view
Red-blue stereoscopic images of Dinkinesh, taken between 9 minutes before and 24 minutes after the encounter, and have been sharpened by a process called deconvolution.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab/Brian May/Claudia Manzoni
Red-blue stereoscopic images of Selam,taken between 4.5 minutes before and 0.5 minutes before the encounter. All images have been sharpened by a process called deconvolution.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab/Brian May/Claudia Manzoni
Cross your eyes for a 3D view
Cross-eyed stereoscopic images of Dinkinesh, taken between 9 minutes before and 24 minutes after the encounter, and have been sharpened by a process called deconvolution.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab/Brian May/Claudia Manzoni
Cross eyed stereoscopic images of Selam, taken between 4.5 minutes before and 0.5 minutes before the encounter. All images have been sharpened by a process called deconvolution.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab/Brian May/Claudia Manzoni
Relax your eyes or use a stereocopic viewer for a 3D view
A pair of stereoscopic images of the asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite, Selam, created using data collected by the L’LORRI camera on the NASA Lucy spacecraft in the minutes around closest approach on Nov. 1, 2023. To use this image pair to get a better sense of the 3D structure of the asteroids, either relax the axes of your eyes, as if staring through the screen to infinity (so that you are looking at the left image with your left eye and the right image with your right eye), or use a stereoscope. These images have been processed to enhance contrast, and the apparent distance between Selam and Dinkinesh has been artificially reduced to facilitate simultaneous stereo view of the two objects.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab/Brian May/Claudia Manzoni
Straight stereoscopic images of Dinkinesh, taken between 9 minutes before and 24 minutes after the encounter, and have been sharpened by a process called deconvolution.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab/Brian May/Claudia Manzoni
Straight stereoscopic images of Selam, taken between 4.5 minutes before and 0.5 minutes before the encounter. All images have been sharpened by a process called deconvolution.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab/Brian May/Claudia Manzoni
Diagrams
Dinkinesh, a diamond shaped asteroid, is rotating right to left in the center of the image. There is a red line across the diameter of the asteroid, with red squares along that line to show the rotation period. Red text is in the upper left corner reading ''Rotation Period = 4.00 hr''. White text is in the lower left corner showing increasing numbers of the time and phase as the asteroid rotates. It is lit from the left side.
Dinkinesh, a diamond-shaped asteroid, is initially colored red. A blue section of the asteroid's right side is highlighted then cuts into the rest of the asteroid. It is lit from the right side.
Panels a, b, and c each show stereographic image pairs of the asteroid Dinkinesh taken by the NASA Lucy Spacecraft’s L’LORRI Instrument in the minutes around closest approach on Nov. 1, 2023. The yellow and rose dots indicate the trough and ridge features, respectively. These images have been sharpened and processed to enhance contrast. Panel d shows a side view of Dinkinesh and its satellite Selam taken a few minutes after closest approach.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab
A simulated top down view of the binary asteroid Selam rotating clockwise around its host asteroid Dinkinesh. Selam is two rocks connected to each other with a black line in between them. Dinkinesh is in the center rotating clockwise, with only one side of the simulated sphere rendered as the asteroid's surface. Both asteroids are a tan/beige color.
Dinkinesh and Selam compared to the Empire State Building, the Colosseum, and the Eiffel Tower.
Credit: SwRI/Simone Marchi
Many asteroids, small main-belt on the top half of the image and near Earth on the bottom half, and their sizes are shown to compare to Dinkinesh. The asteroid names and sizes, from left to right and top half to bottom half, are: 951 Gaspra ~12 km, 5535 Annfrank ~5 km, 2867 Steins ~4.5 km, Dactyl moon of 243 Ida ~1.4 km, 152830 Dinkinesh ~1.0 m ~1000 m, 25143 Itokawa ~400 m, 101955 Bennu ~560 m, and 162173 Ryugu ~900 m.
Phased light curves for Dinkinesh and Selam. a, Phased light curve for Dinkinesh folded using a period of 3.7387 h. b, Phased light curve for Selam folded using a period of 52.67 h. These periods were determined from outbound photometry, shown by solid black points. The light curve of Dinkinesh is more complicated than that of Selam. Indeed, the light curve of Selam is reminiscent of what is expected for a contact binary consisting of two rotating spheroids seen edge-on and at this phase angle. The hollow red points were excluded and correspond to mutual events. The arrows indicate when different types of event would be predicted. Events marked with the Lucy spacecraft symbol show occultations (when one object passes in front of the other from the point of view of the spacecraft) if they occur. Events marked with the sun symbol, ⊙, indicate the potential times of eclipses (at which the shadow of one object falls on the other). The observed mutual events are associated with eclipses. Occultations are not seen by Lucy during departure, which is consistent with the fact that its trajectory is slightly inclined with respect to the orbital plane of Dinkinesh. Green arrows show events that occur if Selam were in a prograde orbit about Dinkinesh, whereas orange arrows occur for a retrograde orbit.
Credit: Levison et al (2024). A Contact Binary Satellite of the Asteroid (152830) Dinkinesh.
This diagram shows the trajectory of the NASA Lucy spacecraft (red) during its flyby of the asteroid Dinkinesh and Selam(gray). “A” marks the location of the spacecraft at 12:55 p.m. EDT (1655 UTC) Nov. 1, 2023, and an inset shows the L’LORRI image captured at that time. “B” marks the spacecraft’s position a few minutes later at 4 p.m. EDT (1700 UTC), and the inset shows the corresponding L’LORRI view at that time.
Credit: Overall graphic, NASA/Goddard/SwRI; Inset “A,” NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab; Inset “B,” NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL
A graphic illustrating the expected motion of the NASA Lucy spacecraft and its instrument pointing platform (IPP) during the encounter with asteroid Dinkinesh. The spacecraft’s terminal tracking system is designed to actively monitor the location of Dinkinesh, enabling the spacecraft and IPP to move autonomously in order to observe the asteroid throughout the encounter. The yellow, blue, and grey arrows indicate the directions of the Sun, Earth, and Dinkinesh, respectively. The red arrow indicates motion of the spacecraft.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI
An animation approximating the expected motion of the NASA Lucy spacecraft and its Instrument Pointing Platform (IPP) during its encounter with the asteroid Dinkinesh. The spacecraft’s terminal tracking system is designed to actively monitor the location of Dinkinesh, enabling the spacecraft and IPP to move autonomously in order to observe the asteroid throughout the encounter. The yellow, blue, and grey arrows indicate the directions of the Sun, Earth, and Dinkinesh, respectively. The red arrow indicates the direction of motion of the spacecraft with respect to Dinkinesh.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI
Traditionally spacecraft will take a lot of images where the asteroid “might” be, which end up just being images of deep space. Lucy has a system that autonomously tracks the position of the asteroid and keeps it in the field of view, allowing many more images to be taken of the target.
A top-down view of the inner solar system, with planets shown in gray, Lucy in teal, and Dinkinesh in pink. The Lucy/Dinkinesh close approach will occur on November 1, 2023.
Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
As the NASA Lucy spacecraft travels through the inner edge of the main asteroid belt in the Fall of 2023, the spacecraft will fly by the small asteroid (152830) 1999 VD57, now named Dinkinesh. This graphic shows a top-down view of the Solar System indicating the spacecraft’s trajectory shortly before the November 1 encounter.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI
A top-down, Solar System view showing Lucy's trajectory during the Dinkinesh encounter on November 1, 2023. White - asteroids that Lucy will fly by. Grey - select other Trojan asteroids. Blue - Earth. Red- Lucy spacecraft. Orange - Jupiter.
Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
A plot of asteroid proper orbital elements, with semi-major axis in AU on the x-axis (spanning from 2 to 3.5 in increments of 0.1) and inclination in degrees on the y-axis (spanning from 0 to 20 in increments of 2). Yellow points are plotted, and a red circle is indicated around (2.2, 2) to show where Dinkinesh falls on this plot.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI
Team Photos
Many people stand around tables spanning across the room, while looking to the right and with delighted expressions. Not pictured: the first image of Dinkinesh.
Credit: SwRI/Katherine Kretke
Many people stand around tables spanning across the room, while looking off to the left and pointing to what they see. Many people have shocked faces. Not pictured: the first image of Dinkinesh's not previously known satellite, Selam.
Credit: SwRI/S. Robbins
Many smiling people stand in three rows that span across the center of the image, the bottom third being a desk with computer monitors, and the top third being tv screens and the ceiling. Many people are wearing shirts with the Lucy emblem on them.
Credit: Lockheed Martin
A model of the Lucy spacecraft takes up the left half of the image, the right half is the back of a person wearing a black t-shirt with the Dinkinesh emblem badge.
Credit: Lockheed Martin
Two tv screens take up 1/3 of the image on the left hand side, on them are updates on the Lucy mission, while many people stand looking and smiling up at the screens.
Credit: Lockheed Martin
Many people are seen standing in front of a tv screen, positioned on the far left side of the image, while smiling and clapping.
Credit: Lockheed Martin
Four people in frame, two on the left, one in the center, and one on the right. On the left, one person in a red shirt is in the background, and the other person standing in front with a black hoodie while smiling. The person in the middle is smiling, wearing a black long sleeve shirt with a Lucy emblem, and a lanyard. The person on the right is wearing a white mask and black t-shirt.
Credit: Lockheed Martin
Two people are looking to the left and sitting in from of computer monitors. The person on the left side has a headset on, and the person on the right is wearing a Lucy emblem shirt and lanyard.
Credit: Lockheed Martin