                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                               2023 November 4

                             Dinkinesh Moonrise
        Image Credit: NASA/Goddard, SwRI, Johns Hopkins APL, NOIRLab

   Explanation: Last Wednesday the voyaging Lucy spacecraft encountered
   its first asteroid, 152830 Dinkinesh, and discovered the inner-main
   belt asteroid has a moon. From a distance of just over 400 kilometers,
   Lucy's Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager captured this close-up of the
   binary system during a flyby at 4.5 kilometer per second or around
   10,000 miles per hour. A marvelous world, Dinkinesh itself is small,
   less than 800 meters (about 0.5 miles) across at its widest. Its
   satellite is seen from the spacecraft's perspective to emerge from
   behind the primary asteroid. The asteroid moon is estimated to be only
   about 220 meters wide.

                     Tomorrow's picture: aurora borealis
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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