LINUS (MOON)

'(22) Kalliope I Linus' is an asteroid moon that orbits the large M-type asteroid 22 Kalliope.
With an estimated 38±6 km diameter , Linus is very large compared to most asteroid moons, and in fact would be a sizeable asteroid by itself. The only known larger moons in the Main belt are the two components of the double asteroid 90 Antiope.
On August 29, 2001, astronomers Jean-Luc Margot and Michael E. Brown discovered
Linus orbiting 22 Kalliope with the Keck telescope. Another team also detected the moon with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on September 2, 2001. Both telescopes are on Mauna Kea. It received the provisional designation 'S/2001 (22) 1', and was named on August 8, 2003 after the mythological Linus, son of the muse Calliope and the inventor of melody and rhythm.
It has been estimated that Linus' orbit precesses at quite a rapid rate, making one cycle in several years. This is attributed primarily to the non-spherical shape of Kalliope . Linus's brightness has varied appreciably between observations, which may indicate that its shape is elongated .
Linus may have formed out of impact ejecta from a collision with Kalliope or a fragment captured after disruption of a parent asteroid (a proto-Kalliope).

Contents

External links

References

External links

★ IAUC 7703, announcing Linus' discovery

★ IAUC 8177, announcing Linus' naming

★ Link to the Linus discovery paper , "A Low-Density M-type Asteroid in the Main Belt"

★ Kalliope and Linus very well resolved with the 8m VLT

★ orbit diagram for Linus

★ Information on Kalliope, Linus' orbit and several images

★ A different VLT image of Kalliope and Linus

★ another image of Kalliope and Linus

References

1. IAUC 7703
2. synthesis of several observations including recent ones with the VLT 8m telescope.
3. ''A Low-Density M-type Asteroid in the Main Belt'', J.L. Margot & M.E. Brown, , , Science, 2003
4. ''A three-dimensional solution for the orbit of the asteroidal satellite of 22 Kalliope'', F. Marchis et al, , , Icarus, 2003
5. Assuming the same albedo as Kalliope.
6. Based on a rough tidal locking timescale of several tens of My.