Great asteroid
(130) Elektra (Electre in French), which evolves in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, has at least three small moons orbiting around it. A new discovery thanks to results from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and a record… due to ever more efficient instruments.
It is probably not the only asteroid with three moons, warns the scientific team.
Elektra everywhere, Daredevil nowhere
It is a curiosity that until now escaped the various increasingly efficient telescopes in service around the world. The large asteroid Electra (182 km in diameter on average, even if it is a “potatoid”) discovered at the end of the 19and century, evolves in the Asteroid Belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
In 2003, a team discovered its first small moon, 6 km in diameter, thanks to the Keck telescope at the Mauna Kea observatory (Hawaii). And in 2014, a second smaller natural satellite, about 2 km wide, was observed via the VLT (Very Large Telescope, from ESO in Chile). It was by re-studying data from 2014 and then adding more observations from 2016 and 2019 that astronomer A. Berdeu and his team identified a third moon. The study is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
A first, of course…
It would therefore be the first known asteroid with three moons! But probably not the last, because astronomers and their powerful observatories already have other candidates in reserve, periodically scrutinized in search of new natural satellites.
More than 150 asteroids have moons, it’s not that rare (and remember, by this fall, the DART probe will hit one of them!), but detecting them is not easy . According to A. Fitzsimmons, a researcher interviewed by the New York Times on the subject, in the case of Electra it is probably debris from an old collision between the asteroid and a smaller neighbor, which also explains the exotic orbit of this last small moon… It would not be in effect not necessarily stable over the very long term.
The VLT in the foreground
If we are currently witnessing an anthology of scientific publications thanks to ESO instruments, it is not just a coincidence. The European VLT observatory based in Chile continues to improve its most efficient tools such as SPHERE or ESPRESSO.
Three days ago, the new kid, ERIS, produced its official “first light” (after conclusive tests in 2021) by observing the spectrum of a star, HR 1756, using a brand new sensor and adaptive optics technology with laser to minimize the effects of atmospheric disturbance. Discoveries on the horizon?
On the same subject :
And three! ESO Team Discovers New Exoplanet Around Proxima Centauri
Source: NY Times
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