Wonder what they’ll name some of the craters and features on Lutetia assuming that happens?

One other thing I meant to note earlier – does anyone else think Lutetia looks almost rounded by its own gravity – more in some shots than others?

It makes me think it could be like a quarter of a sphere – perhaps a proto-planetary world that was split in four fragments just as it was almost formed?

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100712.html

With a bit of imagination, it’s almost as if the Lutetia image was taken with a fisheye lens, and this other shot taking from exactly the other side using a telelens.

It isn’t of course, the APOD one is a Saturnian moon, and the lighting wouldn’t fit, but it’s still a funny coincidence.

Amazing. Does anyone know how far away Saturn is relative to Lutetia in that last photo?

I do very approximately.

Lutetia orbits from between 2.0 to 2.8 Astronomical Units or AU.

Saturn orbits at 9 and a half AU.

Now one Astronomical Unit is the distance between the Earth and our Sun which is 149,597,870 kilometers or almost 93 million miles or 499 lightseconds. (Call it 150 million km and 500 light seconds rounded up.)

So if we say Lutetia is at 2.5 AU in the foreground with Saturn in the background at 9.5 AU then the distance between them is 7 AU or ten thousand and fifty million kilometers or 3,500 light seconds – if my maths (which I warn you is poor – & I didn’t have my calculator handy for this!) is right. Feel free to cross check and let me know if I’ve got it wrong or if anyone else knows it more precisely.

I’ll leave it to someone else to work out the figure in miles.

Sources :
Daintith, John & Gould, William, ‘Collins internet-linked Dictionary of Astronomy’, Collins, 2006 [figure in km & light seconds]
Maddison, Dr Robert, ‘A Dictionary of Astronomy’, Hamlyn, 1980. [Figure in miles.] &
Wikipedia – 21 Lutetia page : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutetia_(asteroid)

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PS. I tried to post this comment earlier with the wiki-link to Lutetia under my “website” box in the form so that folks could click on my name for the link & NOT have it go into moderation but that hasn’t come through. Why?! That technique has worked before – why this time, has something changed & why does the BA’s spam filter seem to give me grief? Sorry if this comes through twice.

This is the largest asteroid and earliest numbered (I think) we’ve seen so far. Always fantastic and fascinating to a see a new world – even a minor planet – up close for the first time.

Wonder if humans will ever land on, perhaps even settle on this rock? I hope so.

@31. ByJove Says:

The grooves are a puzzle, aren’t they? When it was just Phobos, I thought they might have somehow resulted from tidal stresses. Now I’m left scratching my noggin.

Well, just because Lutetia is *currently* alone in middle of the asteroid belt doesn’t mean it has *always* been orbiting there and maybe in Lutetia’s distant past it passed close to a planet or protoplanet?

That might’ve happened even in the region that is now the asteroid belt – Ceres was forming into a planet before its formation was disrupted by Jupiter and so were Vesta and some of the other larger worlds. Maybe even Lutetia itself was a much more major planet before being broken apart and turned into a minor planet (albeit a fairly major minor planet! ) in collisions with other asteroids?

Or perhaps the groovy features arise through impact? Just a few thoughts.

@ND. Death to IE6 indeed!

That’s an ongoing problem with customers and their IT department. An entrenched IE6 install base that needs to be supported. I think there should be a surcharge for supporting IE6 in products. Some sort of IE6 tax. If it’s feasible that might do the trick.

IE6. The passion of the hate.

… Evidence of Lutetians.

Totally kidding, of course. :-p

Death to IE6!!! The bastard child of the browser wars.

I just wanted to add that in this case, perhaps the longer texts should go in the page itself, below the images, rather than as mouseover popups (or that’s how it seems to be intended to me anyway, with the links and all). Don’t know who to blame, in other words. :-)

Okay, threadjack over. (Sorry, folks.)

totally, considering how small saturn is compared to it…i mean just look…