Jupiter discovered an asteroid with its own satellite

NASA Lucy mission science team figured out new details about the asteroid Polymela, the smallest studied cosmic body that orbits Jupiter. It turned out that he has his own satellite - like the Moon around the Earth, only much smaller.

Scientists were able to locate the satellite thanks to the work of 26 teams of astronomers, each focusing on parts of Polymelus' trajectory as seen from Earth. Experts drew attention to a bright glow near Polymela, but considered it to be a reflection of a star. But the information from two reports made it possible to detect an object about 200 km from Polimela. It's still a satellite.

Details were obtained by studying the data on coveringCoverage - a phenomenon in which for the observer one celestial body passes in front of another, obscuring it completely or partially.. So scientists found out that the diameter of the satellite is 5 km (Polymela itself is about 27 km in diameter).

The small satellite has not yet received an official name: according to the rules, you first need to determine its orbit. Most likely this will happen in 2027, when the Lucy spacecraft gets closer to the asteroid - now Polymela is 770 million km from Earth. Also, astronomers may be lucky if they can fix one more coverage: then new information will appear earlier.