On September 9, new images of Kleopatra were published by the European Southern Observatory. Scientists say the new observations suggest that this asteroid is a bit “messy” at its ends. It’s possible that it was actually a pile of debris that lost some of its pieces and got two moons. Astronomers published 2 articles on Kleopatra on May 19 and August 16 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
As for Kleopatra’s images, it was the team led by astronomer Franck Marchis of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California that captured the most detailed images of the asteroid ever recorded.
What the pictures revealed
To photograph Kleopatra, scientists used ESO’s Very Large Telescope. At its closest point to Earth, the space rock is located at a distance of 200 million km from our planet.
The images allowed the researchers to see Kleopatra’s progress in space. They were able to observe the object from different angles and were even able to create 3D models. Observations revealed that one of the lobes was larger than the other, and that the total length of the asteroid was 270 km.
According to Marchis, who is the first author of one of the studies, Kleopatra is a unique object in our solar system. He added that science makes a lot of progress by studying bizarre objects, and Kleopatra is one of those oddities. Understanding this complex and multiple system could thus help us learn more about our solar system.
The moons of Cleopatra
The name of Kleopatra comes from that of the famous queen of ancient Egypt. It is also known that her two moons were named AlexHelios and CleoSelene, which are in fact the names of the Queen’s two brothers.
Miroslav Broz of Charles University in Prague was the lead author of the other Kleopatra study. Using the new observations, he and his team tried to find the correct orbits of the two moons. Broz said the solution to this problem had to be found because the previously determined orbits were wrong. He added that everything was wrong, even Kleopatra’s calculated mass.
So Broz and his team found the key to the mystery by using the new observations and doing modeling to uncover the asteroid’s gravitational influence on the movement of the moons. When they were able to define the orbits of the satellites, they were able to calculate the mass of the asteroid. They found that its mass was 35% less than previously estimated. Its density is also lower when comparing the results with the previous results. Scientists now believe that Kleopatra is actually just a heap of debris formed from material from a giant impact. According to them, if the asteroid spun faster, it would fall apart. Astronomers also believe that the two moons were formed this way, that is to say from parts that were washed away by small impacts.
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