There’s a weird asteroid shaped like a bone whipping around our sun

By Georgina Torbet Published April 28, 2022

Astronomers have gotten their closest look yet at an unusually shaped asteroid orbiting the sun in the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars.

The strange asteroid, named Kleopatra, was recently imaged in the most detail to date using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The image below shows the asteroid from different angles, revealing its two lobes linked by a center portion with an overall shape like a bone.

Eleven images of the asteroid Kleopatra, viewed at different angles as it rotates. — These eleven images are of the asteroid Kleopatra, viewed at different angles as it rotates. The images were taken at different times between 2017 and 2019 with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s VLT. Kleopatra orbits the Sun in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers have called it a “dog-bone asteroid” ever since radar observations around 20 years ago revealed it has two lobes connected by a thick “neck”. ESO/Vernazza, Marchis et al./MISTRAL algorithm (ONERA/CNRS)

“Kleopatra is truly a unique body in our Solar System,” said the lead author of a new study on the asteroid, Franck Marchis, an astronomer at the SETI Institute. “Science makes a lot of progress thanks to the study of weird outliers. I think Kleopatra is one of those and understanding this complex, multiple-asteroid system can help us learn more about our Solar System.”

Recommended Videos

To understand the shape of Kleopatra, the researchers used the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on the VLT to capture it from different angles and then created a 3D model of its shape. They noticed that one lobe is rather larger than the other, and in total its length is around 170 miles.

Another interesting tidbit about this asteroid is that it has two moons orbiting it. Their orbits are complex due to the asteroid’s odd shape, but with those modeled the researchers could use this information to calculate the asteroid’s mass, which turned out to be considerably less than previously estimated.

Future studies of Kleopatra will use the upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) to look at it in even more detail. The adaptive optics system of this new telescope will use a deformed mirror to lessen the distortion caused by the atmosphere, allowing it to see distant objects like the asteroid in sharper focus.

“I can’t wait to point the ELT at Kleopatra, to see if there are more moons and refine their orbits to detect small changes,” said Marchis.

The research is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Georgina Torbet

Former Space Writer

Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…

Topics

Space

SpaceX Starship reaches orbit for the first time but its historic flight ends early

Starship reaches orbit for the first time and deploys 26 Starlink satellites before an early splashdown.

spacex-starship

After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180

Space

Starship is finally going orbital, and SpaceX has picked September 22

Flight 14 is aiming for orbit, Starlink V3 deployment and a very long day in space.

Starship rocket.

SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.

Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver

Space

Want a city on the Moon? Scientists say there’s not enough water

A billion tons still comes up short

Artist impression of activities in a Moon Base.

For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.

A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.