Dactyl: High Resolution View PIA00297
Idact03 This image is the most detailed picture of the recently discovered natural satellite of asteroid 243 Ida taken by the Galileo Solid-State Imaging camera during its encounter with the asteroid on August 28, 1993.
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Image Credit: JPL, NASA  

Shuttered through the camera's broadband clear filter as part of a 30-frame mosaic designed to image the asteroid itself, this frame fortuitously captured the previously unknown moon at a range of about 3,900 km, just over 4 minutes before the spacecraft's closest approach to Ida. Each picture element spans about 39 m on the surface of the moon. More than a dozen craters larger than 80 m in diameter are clearly evident, indicating that the moon has suffered numerous collisions from smaller Solar System debris during its history. The larger crater on the terminator is about 300 m across. The satellite is approximately egg-shaped, measuring about 1.2 x 1.4 x 1.6 km. At the time this image was shuttered, Ida was about 90 km away from the moon.  
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