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Moon (Dactyl) Discoved Orbiting Asteroid Ida

Posted by chrisd on from the trying-to-resist-bad-uranus/asteroids-joke dept.

Dot.Sig writes "Here is a picture and short description of an asteroid with its own moon." Taken by galileo during it's trip to jupiter. Sort of like those pics you take out the car window.... Here is the requisite NASA Press Release. Who names these thing, anyway? Not the first asteroid to be found to have a moon, but interesting regardless.

6 of 16 comments (clear)

  1. who names these things? by larry+bagina · · Score: 2, Funny
    Good question... if you had followed the link, you would know.
    The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has approved the name Dactyl for the tiny moon discovered this year in orbit around the asteroid Ida by NASA's Galileo mission.

    ...

    The name is derived from the Dactyli, a group of mythological beings who lived on Mount Ida, where the infant Zeus was hidden -- and raised, in some accounts -- by the nymph Ida and protected by the Dactyli. Other mythological accounts say that the Dactyli were Ida's children by Zeus.

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  2. Ida is first known asteroid with moon... by heimotikka · · Score: 3, Informative
    In this page it says:

    Galileo's two planned visits to the asteroid belt provided the first and second opportunities for close observation of these bodies: in October 1991 the spacecraft flew by asteroid Gaspra, obtaining the world's first close-up asteroid images; in August 1993 it flew by a second asteroid, Ida, and discovered the first confirmed asteroid moon.

    I saw this "news" long time ago in a magazine - and it seems that actually this is the first known asteroid with moon. Date in press release you linked is September 20, 1994... It just happened to be chosen as a astronomy picture of the day. Quite old news for the first page?

  3. is this a joke or what? by alonsoac · · Score: 2, Redundant

    I really don't get this, is it supposed to be funny. Just to show how old this "news" are I named my first two computers Dactyl and Ida. Ida was a 486 and is now retired, stored somewhere in my closet. Dactyl is a Amd k6-2 300 mhz which I still have for playing music and games for my brothers. My point is somehow I knew about this a long time ago. What's it doing in the frontpage?

  4. Link has changed by big_hairy_mama · · Score: 3

    The story's link points to a page that changes every day. The real (old, as of midnight) picture is at this page.

  5. I remember.... by Muad'Dave · · Score: 3, Funny
    this. They had a contest to name the moon. I thought the most clever name for Ida's moon was Besida ("Beside-uh").

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  6. Old news by shd99004 · · Score: 2

    I remember reading about this in an astronomy paper i subscribed to back in the 90's...

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