PIA20215: Not Your Father's Asteroid
 Target Name:  Asteroid
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Goldstone Deep Space Network (DSN)
 Instrument:  Goldstone Solar System Radar
 Product Size:  1920 x 1080 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  JPL
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA20215.tif (364.1 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA20215.jpg (62.59 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

On the left is a radar image of asteroid 1998 WT24 taken in December 2001 by scientists using NASA's the 230-foot (70-meter) DSS-14 antenna at Goldstone, California. On the right is a radar image of the same asteroid acquired on Dec. 11, 2015, during the asteroid's most recent Earth flyby.

The radar images from 2001 (on the left), have a resolution of about 60 feet (19 meters) per pixel. The radar image from 2015 (on the right) achieved a spatial resolution as fine as 25 feet (7.5 meters) per pixel.

The 2015 radar image was obtained using the same DSS-14 antenna at Goldstone to transmit high-power microwaves toward the asteroid. However, this time, the radar echoes bounced off the asteroid were received by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's 100-meter (330-foot) Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.

The next visit of asteroid 1998 WT24 to Earth's neighborhood will be on Nov. 11, 2018, when it will make a distant pass at about 12.5-million miles (52 lunar distances).

More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch. More information about asteroid radar research is at http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/.

More information about the Deep Space Network is at http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSSR/NRAO/AUI/NSF

Image Addition Date:
2015-12-17