Queen’s Brian May Helps Create New NASA Space Rock Images

Brian May may be the co-founder of one of the greatest rock bands of all time, but the Queen star has a thriving side hustle as an astrophysicist. Now, May has revealed in a blog post for NASA that he has worked on more stereoscopic images as part of the investigations into the near-Earth asteroid, Bennu.

After pieces of the asteroid were dropped down to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on Sept. 24, NASA unveiled its first photos and observations of the rocks and rubble within on Oct. 11. Now, May has collaborated with amateur astro-stereographer Claudia Manzoni again to create images of the asteroid sample using stereoscopy, which essentially makes flat images appear in 3D.

The images are created using a pair of pictures of the same scene, taken from different distances. "This separation of viewpoints, known as the 'baseline,' has to be just right to give us the experience of depth and reality when the images are viewed stereoscopically," May explained in the post.

To do that, each image has to be delivered to our eyes separately through a special instrument called a stereoscope — because of how our brains work, we consolidate the two images to one, and perceive the image as having depth, as if it were in 3D, even though it's flat.

In the new images, May shows how two pictures of the Bennu sample can be revealed in stereoscopic vision without a stereoscope — "by relaxing the axes of the eyes, as if staring through the screen to infinity."

The pair of close-up images show centimeter-wide rocks and fine-grain dust collected from the surface of Bennu. These precious samples could ultimately reveal how water came to be on Earth, as well as how life on our planet began.