showed eclipses every 33

hours caused by an object

40 percent its size. Details
0.2
on both asteroids have
been published by Petr
Pravec (Ondrejov Observatory, Czech Republic)
and his colleagues in the
0.1
journal Icarus and in IAU
Circular 6607.
Then last June came a
third announcement. Astronomers at the European
0.0
Southern Observatory who
have been monitoring asteroids light curves found
Normal light curve
the signature of a satellite
Light curve measured
eclipsing the 1-kilometerJune 78, 1997
0.1
wide Earth-crosser 3671
Difference from
predicted brightness
Dionysus. In addition to its
2.7-hour rotation period,
Dionysus showed eclipses
22h
0h
4h
2h
every 28 hours. Stefano
Universal Time
Mottola (German Aerospace Research) and colAn asteroids telltale dimming. The solid line is the average light
leagues reported this find- curve of 3671 Dionysus during the first half of last June; the asing in IAU Circular 6680.
teroid faded and brightened twice each time it rotated. On June
This growing tally fits
8th came an additional, unexpected dimming, which has been
well with current ideas
separated out at bottom.This eclipse event repeated every 1.155
that many asteroids are
days, revealing Dionysuss previously unknown companion.
rubble piles only loosely
held together by gravity. Even a small
Earth itself bears graphic evidence that
collision between asteroids could result
asteroids sometimes come in pairs. Of the
in many large pieces being expelled, and
Earths 28 largest impact craters, three
two pieces in nearly the same trajectory
are doublets formed by the nearly simulcould end up orbiting each other. Altertaneous impacts of two bodies. And
natively, the disruption could have come planetary scientist William Bottke (Corfrom tidal forces when a near-Earth asnell University) sees comparable rates of
teroid made an especially close pass by
double-impact features on Venus, Mars,
our planet long ago.
and the Moon.

A Bow Shock for Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis), the red supergiant marking the Hunters shoulder, has
long been known as a stellar speedster. Its
radial velocity and proper motion show it
flying at a relatively rapid 60 kilometers
per second from its likely birthplace, the
Orion OB 1 Association of bright, young
stars around Orions Belt and Sword.
Massive stars like Betelgeuse shed copious amounts of gas and dust, and such effluence might be expected to interact
with the interstellar medium especially
if the star is rapidly moving through space
(S&T: May 1996, page 15). Now, by reprocessing archival images from the Infrared
20

December 1997 Sky & Telescope

An Eclipse of Dionysus

Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), Alberto Noriega -Crespo (Caltech) and his colleagues
have found evidence that Betelgeuse indeed impacts its surroundings.
Their 12-wide, false -color IRAS image
depicts infrared emissions both from the
star (central dot) and from dust in a bow
shock roughly 5 light-years in diameter.
The crescent is brightest in the direction
of Betelgeuses motion; this supports the
notion that the interstellar medium is being swept up by Betelgeuses potent wind.
(The linelike feature in the fields upper
left is believed to be unrelated.) Courtesy
Alberto Noriega-Crespo.
1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY

Three asteroids have been photographed close-up by spacecraft: 951

Gaspra in 1991 (by Galileo), 243 Ida in
1993 (again by Galileo), and 253 Mathilde
last June (by NEAR). The most surprising
discovery in these encounters was the little
moon that orbits Ida. One asteroid satellite
seen in just three good looks those
numbers led some solar-system specialists to suspect that asteroid satellites are
common. Now it looks as if theyre right.
The first signs that some asteroids
might have moons came from amateur-led
occultation studies in the late 1970s, but
those reports met with skepticism (S&T:
January 1995, page 23). Now, however,
three small, faint asteroids passing near
Earth have each shown evidence of having an even tinier partner circling them.
The first case involved the minor planet
1994 AW1, an Earth-approacher no more
than about 1 kilometer wide. Astronomers
monitored its brightness during its 1994
flyby of Earth and found small variations
showing that it rotates every 2.5 hours.
But the light curve contained a surprise.
The asteroid also dimmed very regularly
every 11.2 hours, suggesting that it was
being eclipsed by a satellite about half its
size orbiting it rather closely with a 22.4hour period. There were presumably two
dimmings per orbit; once when the large
body occulted the small one, and once
when the small object covered part of
the face of the large one.
Last winter astronomers made a similar discovery when tracking another
small near-Earth asteroid, 1991 VH. It
not only varied in brightness due to a
2.6-hour rotation period it also

0.3

Relative magnitude

NEWSNOTES

New Satellites of Asteroids