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Archive-name: auto/sci.space.news/Toutatis-Images-Available

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                            TOUTATIS GIF IMAGES
                              January 4, 1993
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     Four radar images of Asteroid 4179 Toutatis have been released and are
available in GIF format (GIF89a).  The asteroid made a near Earth flyby
on December 8, 1992, at a distance of 2.2 million miles.  The antennas at
the Deep Space Network site in Goldstone, California, were used to bounce
radar off of the asteroid to obtain the images.  The four images are contained 
in a single GIF file.  These images were scanned in from a photograph and are 
not the raw data.  The caption file accompanying the images is attached below, 
and the caption file is also embedded in the image.  Make sure you are in 
binary mode when downloading the images, and in ascii mode when downloading 
the caption files.  The Toutatis images are available using anonymous ftp to:

        ftp:    ames.arc.nasa.gov (128.102.18.3)
        user:   anonymous
        cd:     pub/SPACE/GIF
        files:
                toutatis.gif - Four views of asteroid 4179 Toutatis
                toutatis.txt - Caption file

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toutatis.txt

PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. (818) 354-5011

PHOTO CAPTION                 (TOP)                       P-41525
                                                  January 4, 1993
                                            Toutatis Radar Images

These are radar images of asteroid 4179 Toutatis made during the
object's recent close approach to Earth.  The images reveal two
irregularly shaped, cratered objects about 4 and 2.5 kilometers
(2.5 and 1.6 miles) in average diameter which are probably in
contact with each other.  The four frames shown here (from left to
right) were obtained on Dec. 8, 9, 10 and 13 when Toutatis was
an average of about 4 million kilometers (2.5 million miles) from
Earth.  The time required to obtain each of these images was 55,
14, 37 and 85 minutes, respectively.  On each day, the asteroid
was in a different orientation with respect to Earth.  In these
images, the radar illumination comes from the top of the page, so
parts of each component facing toward the bottom are not seen.
The large crater shown in the Dec. 9 image (upper right)
is about 700 meters (2,300 feet) in diameter.  The radar
observations were carried out at the Goldstone Deep Space
Communications Complex in California's Mojave desert by a team
led by Dr. Steven Ostro of JPL.  For most of the work, a
400,000-watt coded radio transmission was beamed at Toutatis from
the Goldstone main 70-meter (230-foot) antenna.  The echoes,
which took as little as 24 seconds to travel to Toutatis and
back, were received by the new 34-meter (112-foot) antenna and
relayed back to the 70-meter station where they were decoded and
processed into images.  The radar observations were part of the
Planetary Astronomy Program of NASA's Office of Space Science and
Applications.

                              #####
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | Choose a job you love, and
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | you'll never have to work
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     | a day in your life.