from slashdot:<p><i>The article explains why the asteroid looks like a pixelated sprite taken from the era of Monkey Island.<p>For those that didn't want to bother reading both articles and just wanted to have a look at the image but then thought "WTF" after having a look at it:<p>"The individual pulses can be timed very accurately as well, so that the shape of the asteroid can be determined, too. If there is a bump on the asteroid, like a hill, then a pulse hitting that won’t travel quite as far as a pulse that hits a crater. It gets back sooner, and this can be measured. The spatial resolution of this method at the distance of YU 55 will be about 4 meters, so they’ll be able to make an image that’s about 100 pixels across of it."</i>
I feel like I'm about to ask an incredibly dumb question, but why does the radar image show such a pronounced crescent shape on the asteroid? What's causing the radar "shadow"?
This asteroid has a page on WikiPedia, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_YU55" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_YU55</a><p><i>"On 19 January 2029, 2005 YU55 will pass about 0.0023 AU (340,000 km; 210,000 mi) from Venus. The close approach to Venus in 2029 will determine how close the asteroid will pass the Earth in 2041."</i>
Additional information from <a href="http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news171.html" rel="nofollow">http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news171.html</a> :<p>- the asteroid is 400 meters in size<p>- it's a "C-type" asteroid (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-type_asteroid" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-type_asteroid</a>)
I think they just took a screenshot of some video game from the 90s. Duke Nukem? Doom?<p>Seriously does this kind of image do anything for the scientists or is this just PR?