On February 14, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) published an interesting discovery on its website that the third moon of asteroid 130 Elektra was confirmed, making it the first "quadrapilla asteroid system" in history.
Actresses originally have a touch of "legend". On February 17, 1873, astronomer Christian Peters discovered an asteroid at the Litchfield Observatory in New York and named it after the Avengers electra in Greek mythology. Electrocutella is one of the more popular mythological figures in tragedy, and the Greek playwrights Sophocles and Euripides of the 5th century BC have written tragedies with them as protagonists, and they are also called Electra.
The asteroid spectra of The Female Is classified as G-type , which may have a similar composition to Ceres , and also has spectroscopic signatures of suspected organic compounds on its surface. On April 21, 2018, there was a esconclusion process of the star, when more than 30 astronomers from five European countries jointly made observations and recorded a sudden decrease in the brightness of the 11th magnitude star. The duration of the brightness drop can be observed in different locations. If these records are brought together, the shape of this "black shadow" can be depicted. Astronomers have found that the asteroid is peanut-shaped, speculating that it may have formed when two objects collided and merged in the early solar system. Such irregular shapes should not be uncommon among asteroids.
Female Star OccultAtion Record (Source: Wikipedia)
What is even more interesting is that the actress also "drags the family with the mouth", and there are many satellites. With a diameter of 200 kilometers, it is a relatively large asteroid. Asteroids have moons, and this is not the case. However, it has the most satellites. These moons are only a few kilometers in size, the brightness is very weak, and the orbit is very close to the star, so they are often drowned in the light of the star (reflecting the sun's rays).
On August 15, 2003, W. Merlin (W. The team led by J. Merline discovered the first moon of The Lady of the Moona at the Monacaia Observatory in Hawaii, about 1300 kilometers away, under the designation S/2003 (130) 1. If we assume that its albedo is the same as that of the actress, then its diameter is about 6 kilometers.
On December 6, 2014, Outram's very large telescope UT3 was equipped with a powerful adaptive optical system SPHERE, which was used by B. Yang. A team led by Yang found a second satellite, just 2 kilometers in diameter, numbered S/2014 (130) 1. According to this near-infrared observation, S/2003 (130) 1 and S/2014 (130) 1 both showed spectra similar to those of the goddess, so astronomers believe that the two small moons are most likely the flesh that fell from the star' - the debris formed after the collision.
Schematic diagram of the orbit of the satellite of The Female Star (Source: ESO/Berdeu et al., Yang et al.)
On November 6, 2021, a team led by Anthony Berdeu of Thailand's National Astronomical Institute reported the discovery of the third moon of The Lady in an archive taken between December 9 and 31, 2014, tentatively named S/2014 (130)2. The report notes that at the time, it was not discovered because it was extremely blurry, 15,000 times brighter than the star, and closer to the star than the previous two moons. With the help of adaptive optics systems and advanced image processing techniques, it was finally resolved. Adaptive optics corrects for image jitter caused by turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere in real time, while image processing techniques increase the signal-to-noise ratio to make the target more pronounced.
If it is still assumed that these satellites have the same reflectivity, then the nearest small satellite is only about 1.6 kilometers. It is worth noting that its orbital semi-major axis is 344 km, the orbital period is about 16 hours, it has a more pronounced eccentricity and inclination, 0.33 and 38° respectively, and exhibits irregular perturbations.
Animated images of the actress and its moons (Source: ESO/Berdeu et al., Yang et al.)
The Satellites are the first "quadratic system" in the asteroid world of the Solar System. If they come from collisions, then similar situations may not be uncommon in the early days of asteroid formation. But how much is left now? Scientists expect similar samples to provide new clues to the evolution of the solar system.
42 main-belt asteroids with images (Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/Vernazza et al./MISTRAL algorithm Chinese Noted by Water Brother)