Some of the asteroids NASA's Lucy mission will visit are still more than 330 million miles (530 million kilometers) away from the spacecraft, which is more than three times the average distance between Earth and the sun. But despite the great distance and the comparatively small sizes of these asteroids, Lucy caught views of four of them recently.

From March 25 to 27, 2023, Lucy used its highest resolution imager, L'LORRI, to capture its first views of four Jupiter Trojan asteroids. From left to right in the above image: Eurybates, Polymele, Leucus, and Orus.

Although the four images are all at the same scale, the orientation of each is different, reflecting the different orientations of the L'LORRI camera as it turned to capture each target.

The targets were also observed for different time periods based on their rotation periods:

• Eurybates images were taken over a span of 6.5 hours.
• Polymele, about 2.5 hours.
• Leucus, 2 hours.
• Orus, 10 hours.

These images are the first in a series of planned observations designed to measure how the Trojan asteroids reflect light at higher angles than is observable from Earth.

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It is not only in the tunnels of CERN that we learn about the origin and composition of the universe. Look up, and space offers the most beautiful phenomena to study: black holes, dark matter, cosmic rays, etc. Studying planets, their structure and their composition teach us a lot about the formation of our own planet and might one day lead us to find a habitat and possibly life.

One of the intriguing features of the biggest planet in our galaxy, Jupiter, is the sheer number of its moons, almost one hundred in total, three of which have large oceans under a huge ice crust.