Asteroid moon

An asteroid moon is an asteroid that orbits or goes around another asteroid. Asteroid moons are quite rare. Only 2% of asteroids are thought to have moons.

The asteroid 243 Ida and its moon Dactyl.

To be an asteroid moon, an asteroid has to be smaller than the object it goes around. If they are roughly the same size they are called a binary pair.

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.