216 Kleopatra

216 Kleopatra

It’s time for Ferrebeekeeper to get back out to space.  This grotesque gray hambone-looking thing is a metallic asteroid approximately the size of New Jersey known as 216 Kleopatra.  The asteroid was discovered in 1880 by Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa when he was director of the Austrian naval observatory at the great Austrian naval port of Pula (!). The asteroid is 217 kilometers long by 94 kilometers deep by 81 kilometers long (135 miles by 58 miles by 50 miles).  It is composed of slurry of metal, dust, and…nothing: between 30 to 50% of the asteroid’s volume is empty space (which makes it sound a lot like the consumer goods for sale in American stores).

216 Kleopatra has been the subject of a fair amount of human scrutiny.  In 2008, a team of astronomers working from Hawaii’s Keck observatory (at the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii discovered two tiny moons orbiting the asteroid.  These moons have diameters of about 5 km and 3 km respectively and they are named Alexhelios and Cleoselene for Cleopatra’s children.

An obvious question is what knocked this doughty asteroid into a strangely shaped cloud of weird slurry and little moons.  The most obvious answer is an oblique impact, which astronomers estimate occurred about a hundred million years ago.  I wonder what other secrets this giant rubble pile in space is hiding.

Also…it rotates, as seen in this stunning animation.

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