Astronomers have revealed that a space rock called Electra 130, which is 160 miles wide, has three smaller companion moons. for asteroids They have moons with them. It is known that more than 150 asteroids have at least one moon, but it is not always easy to detect them, especially for this number.
According to the British newspaper, “Daily Mail”, the Electra was first discovered in asteroid belt Between Jupiter and Mars in 1873.
However, the first moon of the asteroid wasn’t spotted until 130 years later, and it took until 2014 to see evidence of a second moon. Perhaps the reason they are so difficult to spot is that asteroids are small and only dimly lit, so any smaller orbiting object is faint and likely The parent asteroid is much outperformed, and not only that, but the closer the moon is to the asteroid, the more difficult it is to see.
The asteroid and its three moons were discovered by a team of astronomers led by Anthony Purdue of the National Institute of Astronomical Research in Thailand. “The Electra is the first quadrupole system ever discovered,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
“This new finding shows that processing and data reduction algorithms dedicated to modeling instrument physics can push the boundaries of variance even further,” the researchers added.