Asteroid With Three Moons Spotted In First-Ever Sighting

The 130 Elektra asteroid has been identified as the first quadruple system to be detected, following the discovery of a third moon.

The 160 mile-wide asteroid was reportedly first seen in 1873, located between Jupiter and Mars.

However, its third moon has only recently been detected.

While it is common for moons to accompany asteroids, it is often hard to spot them, because they're dimly lit.

Elektra's first moon was discovered 130 years after the asteroid was identified, before a second was detected in 2014.

Now, a team of astronomers at Thailand's National Astronomical Research Institute have reported finding a third moon, making Elektra the first quadruple system.

Anthony Berdeu, who led the team, revealed their new discovery in a research paper, adding that the new detection 'shows that dedicated data reduction and processing algorithms modelling the physics of the instruments can push their contrast limits further'.

The three moons each have names: S/2003 (130) 1; S/2014 (130) 1; and S/2014 (130) 2.

Yeah, not quite the fun names we were hoping for, but they seem practical.

As per the Daily Mail, the first moon is 3.7 miles across, the second 1.24 miles across, and the third 1 mile across.

The third moon is said to orbit closer to the asteroid than the others, at a distance of 211 miles.

What's interesting about the new moon is that it was found using the same dataset used to spot the second.

The astronomy team reportedly took archival data and reconfigured it to find the new moon.

Speaking of the discovery in their research paper, the astronomers hope that their work might help discover more faint asteroid moons.

They said, 'The discovery of the first quadruple asteroid system slightly opens the way for understanding the mechanisms of the formation of these satellites.'

According to Space Reference, Elektra orbits the sun every 2,020 days but is far away enough that it has not been classified as a potentially hazardous object to Earth.

Elektra is said to rotate on its axis every 5.23 hours, and its orbit has been determined by observations that date back to 1893.

The asteroid's spectral type is G, which reportedly suggests that it is likely to contain water, iron, nickel, cobalt, nitrogen, and ammonia.

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