151: Game-changing asteroid images with Dr. Marsset

Dr. Michael Marsset (pictured here at the 8 meter telescope at the Gemini observatory in Hawaii) and his collaborators use the world's biggest telescopes to image asteroids. They combine those images with other data to get shapes of asteroids. These results are comparable with spacecraft images, but are much less expensive. Dr. Marsset talks about new discoveries they have made using this technique.

Some of the asteroid images taken with the SPHERE instrument. Clockwise from top left: 29 Amphitrite, 324 Bamberga, 2 Pallas, and 89 Julia. Images collected as part of an ongoing ESO large program by Pierre Vernazza et al.