Hours after its successful flyby of “the jewel of the solar system”, the robotic traveler Rosetta continues to return data from the encounter. From a point of light discovered in 1969 into a world of new vistas, here is Asteroid (2867) Šteins:

Credits: ESA ©2008 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPM/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA - Cutout of “Asteroid Steins seen from a distance of 800 km“

At a press conference to announce preliminary results and to show the first images of Šteins, European Space Agency (ESA) scientists compared the shape of the asteroid to that of a jewel and a diamond. The predicted shape model based on data obtained from Earth-based telescopes held up during the encounter, but the asteroid turned out to be nearly 10% bigger than expected. At its largest diameter Šteins measures 5.9 kilometers,

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