ESO captures 'sharpest and most detailed images' to date of 'dog-bone' asteroid Kleopatra

The solar system is a large ring of stellar mysteries. In search of newer discoveries about the 4.6 billion-year-old space system, astronomers have often delved deeper into the mysterious bodies found in the Solar System. Following such a fascinating discovery, scientists at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have captured meticulously detailed pictures of a peculiar "dog-bone" asteroid.

“Kleopatra is truly a unique body in our Solar System,” says Franck Marchis, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, USA and at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, France, who led a study on the asteroid — which has moons and an unusual shape — published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), a team of astronomers has obtained the sharpest and most detailed images yet of the asteroid Kleopatra, an official press release by the space organisation informed. The astronomers studied the observation and prepared the 3D shape and mass of this "peculiar asteroid, which resembles a dog bone, to a higher accuracy than ever before," ESO said. Take a look at the detailed pictures of the shape and size of the asteroids.

Sharpest and most detailed images of the most mysterious asteroid 

“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 systems can help us learn more about our Solar System,”

Talking about the benefits of the discovery, the statement by ESO mentioned that the "sharpest and the most detailed images" have broken the myth of Kleopatra being a metallic asteroid. The astronomers also figured that the asteroid is in the shape of a dog's bone. Adding details about Kleopatra, the study reported that one of the lobes of the mysterious asteroid is larger than the other, and the length is about 270 kilometres or "about half the length of the English Channel." From the observations made, the scientists concluded that Kleopatra was most likely born due to a colossal impact.

What is Kleopatra?

According to ESO, 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”. In 2008, Marchis and his colleagues discovered that Kleopatra is orbited by two moons, named AlexHelios and CleoSelene, after the Egyptian queen’s children. Kleopatra is located some 200 million kilometres away from Earth at its closest; however, "its apparent size on the sky is equivalent to that of a golf ball about 40 kilometres away."

As per asteroid researcher Franck Marchis of SETI Institute, the current discovery has opened realms of subsequent studies to be conducted in the future.

Image: @SETIInstitute_Twitter/NASA/Unsplash