Astronomers spot 'dog-bone' asteroid named Kleopatra in solar system
- By Web Desk -
- Sep 14, 2021
A team of astronomers has come across an asteroid that looks like a dog bone as it moves around the sun between Mars and Jupiter.
The asteroid named Kleopatra has two moons and is considered to be one of the unique masses in the solar system as it spins at a stunning speed.
The images of the 168-mile long and 58-mile wide space mass were captured between 2017 and 2019 with the help of a Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama desert.
“Kleopatra is truly a unique body in our solar system.” Dr Franck Marchis from the SETI Institute in California said. “Science makes a lot of progress thanks to the study of weird outliers.”
He added that the space object is closest to 125 million miles from the Earth.
Read More: This object may be fragment of wrecked planet
It is believed that the asteroid was the remains of two of its kind which crashed together. However, they were not completely destroyed.
Astronomers said it was bigger than what was expected.
It is not the first time that space history has seen asteroids that have unusual shapes.
Earlier in January, NASA had confirmed that five asteroids – with two of them bigger than the Eiffel Tower – were set to make a close approach to Earth.
In 2020, NASA had issued a warning that a huge asteroid “Asteroid 2020 ND” asteroid is set to make a close approach to our planet next week.
The celestial rock was said to be one and a half times larger than the London Eye and will come within just 0.034 astronomical units (AU) of our planet on July 24.