Astronomers have discovered the first three-lobed asteroid in the solar system with its own moon. An international team of scientists observed the object, which is made up of three connected parts, and also found a small satellite circling it, reports infohub.kz.
Led by Kate Minker of Lowell Observatory, the researchers studied the main-belt asteroid (44) Nysa. To capture detailed images of the roughly 75-kilometer-wide body, they used the SHARK-VIS instrument on the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona and the SPHERE instrument on the Very Large Telescope in Chile.
The images revealed two deep valleys separating the asteroid into three parts. According to Minker, the object is either a contact triple system of three merged bodies or a single body with an extremely irregular shape.
In addition, the team detected a moon roughly one kilometer in diameter, designated S/2026 (44) 1. It orbits at least 170 kilometers from Nysa. As researcher Gianluca Li Causi explained, the moon’s faint glow was captured through high-contrast imaging. Analyzing the satellite’s orbit will enable more precise calculations of the asteroid’s mass and density.