Want to See a Proto-Planet in Anaglyph 3D?

Sure you do!

For some background: Vesta is a proto-planet and the second largest asteroid in our solar system (the first is Ceres, which is technically a dwarf planet). It’s about 330 miles in diameter, is the brightest asteroid visible from Earth, and most of what we know about it comes from little chunks that have been hitting the planet that were the side effect of a massive collision about a billion years ago.

The video itself is assembled from data collected by Dawn, a NASA probe launched in 2007 to visit Vesta and Ceres to gather more information about them. It’s currently been hanging around Vesta since last July, and will leave in 2012 to hit Ceres by 2015. After that, nobody’s really sure what they’re going to do with it; they might take a shot at another huge space rock, Pallas, but they may not have the fuel.

As for why the video is in classic red/green 3D, that would be because it’s awesome. Check it out under the jump.

[ via the Roman demigods at Bad Astronomy ]

×