Asteroid Satellites - Minor Planet Moon, Linus, Remus, Romulus, Petit-Prince, Moonlet (Paperback)

Chapters: Minor Planet Moon, Linus, Remus, Romulus, Petit-Prince, Moonlet. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 28. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: A minor-planet moon is a minor planet that orbits another minor planet as its natural satellite. It is thought that many asteroids and Kuiper belt objects may possess moons, in some cases quite substantial in size. Discoveries of asteroid moons (and binary objects, in general) are important because the determination of their orbits provides estimates on the mass and density of the primary, allowing insights of their physical properties that is generally not otherwise possible. As of October 2009, there are 180 minor planets known to have moon(s). In addition to the terms satellite and moon, the term binary is sometimes used for minor planets with moons (or triple for minor planets with two moons). If one object is much bigger it is usually referred to as the primary and its companion as secondary. The term double asteroid is sometimes used for systems in which the asteroid and its moon are roughly the same size, while binary tends to be used independently from the relative sizes of the components. When binary asteroids are similar in size, the Minor Planet Center (MPC) refers to them as "binary companions" instead of referring to the smaller body as a satellite. A good example of a true binary companion is the 90 Antiope system, discovered in August 2000. Small satellites are often referred to as moonlets. As of October 2009, 190 asteroid moons had been discovered, 67 in the main belt (5 with two satellites), 4 Jupiter Trojans, 37 to 41 near-Earth objects and 9 Mars-crossers. There are also 63 known moons of Trans-Neptunian objects. As early as 1978, following a stellar occultation, 532 Herculina had been suggested to have a moon and there...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=21259