F. Marchis¹ et al. (>10)*
*Find the extensive, full author and affiliation list on the publishers website.

¹Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA

Asteroids with satellites are natural laboratories to constrain the formation and evolution of our solar system. The binary Trojan asteroid (624) Hektor is the only known Trojan asteroid to possess a small satellite. Based on W. M. Keck adaptive optics observations, we found a unique and stable orbital solution, which is uncommon in comparison to the orbits of other large multiple asteroid systems studied so far. From lightcurve observations recorded since 1957, we showed that because the large Req = 125 km primary may be made of two joint lobes, the moon could be ejecta of the low-velocity encounter, which formed the system. The inferred density of Hektor’s system is comparable to the L5 Trojan doublet (617) Patroclus but due to their difference in physical properties and in reflectance spectra, both captured Trojan asteroids could have a different composition and origin.

Reference
Marchis et al. (2014) The puzzling mutual orbit of the binary trojan asteroid (624) Hektor. The Astrophysical Journal – Letters 784:L37.
[doi:10.1088/2041-8205/783/2/L37]

Link to Article