JAKARTA, iNews.id – Astronomers have gotten their closest look at asteroid oddly shaped. The strange asteroid, named Cleopatra, was imaged in the most detail to date using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).
Recent images show the asteroid from different angles, showing its two lobes connected by the center with the overall shape of the bone, as quoted from Digital Trends.
“Cleopatra is truly a unique object in our Solar System. Science is making a lot of progress thanks to the study of strange outliers. I think Cleopatra is one of them and understanding this complex multi-asteroid system can help us learn more about our Solar System.” said lead author of the new study on asteroids, Franck Marchis, astronomer at the SETI Institute.
To understand Cleopatra’s shape, the researchers used the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on the VLT to capture it from different angles and then create a 3D model of the shape. They noticed that one lobe was slightly larger than the other, and that the total length was about 170 miles.
Editor: Dini Listiyani
