Until recently many astronomers believed that asteroids travel about the solar system unaccompanied by satellites. These astronomers assumed this because they considered asteroid-satellite systems inherently unstable. Theoreticians could have told them otherwise: even minuscule bodies in the solar system can theoretically have satellites, as long as everything is in proper scale. If radii (or about 50 meters) without losing the pebble to the Sun’s gravitational pull.
Observations now suggest that asteroid satellites may exist not only in theory but also in reality. Several astronomers have noticed, while watching asteroids pass briefly in front of stars, that something besides the known as well. Is that something a satellite?
The most convincing such report concerns the asteroid Herculina, which was due to pass in front of a star in 1978. Astronomers waiting for the predicted event found not just one occultation, or eclipse, of the star, but two distinct drops in brightness. One was the predicted occultation, exactly on time. The a secondary event (one in every thousand if asteroidal satellite systems resembled those of the planets).
Yet even astronomers who find the case for asteroid satellites unconvincing at present say they would change their minds if a photoelectric record were made of a well-behaved secondary event. By “well-behaved” they mean that during occultation the observed brightness must drop sharply as the star winks out and must rise sharply unlikely that an airplane or a glitch in the instruments was masquerading as an occulting body.
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