The asteroid Ida, with its moon, Dactyl. The image was taken by Galileo in 1993.
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Courtesy of NASA/JPL
Moon Found Orbiting Asteroid
News story originally written on October 11, 1999
A moon was discovered orbiting the asteroid, Eugenia. This is only the second time in history that a satellite has been seen circling an asteroid. A special mirror allowed scientists to find the moon from a telescope on Earth.
The mirror corrects for the blurring caused by Earth's atmosphere. The Hubble Telescope was originally launched so scientists could see objects without looking through the atmosphere. Now, they can study objects from Earth as well.
Asteroid satellites are very difficult to find. The first one, called Dactyl, was discovered by the Galileo spacecraft in 1993. It orbits the asteroid Ida. Eugenia's moon was even harder to find, because the asteroid is much brighter than its moon. It's like looking for a flashlight beam in sunlight.
Now that the moon has been found, scientists can use it to calculate Eugenia's density. It turns out that the asteroid is very light and not much denser than water. It is most likely made of packed rock or ice.
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