Scientists have got the closest look at an unusually shaped space rock orbiting our Sun in the asteroid belt that is located between Jupiter and Mars. The weird space rock called Kleopatra was recently snapped in the most detail to date with the help of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).

The image shows Kleopatra from different angles, revealing its two lobes linked by a center portion with an overall shape like a bone.

3D model helped astronomers study the odd shape

“Kleopatra is truly a unique body in our Solar System,” said Franck Marchis, lead author of a new study on the asteroid. “Science makes a lot of progress thanks to the study of weird outliers. I think Kleopatra is one of those and understanding this complex, multiple-asteroid system can help us learn more about our Solar System.”

To understand the shape of the asteroid, the researchers used Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) aboard the VLT to image it from several angles and then create a 3D model. They learned that one lobe is rather bigger than the other, and in total its length is around 170 miles.

Two moons orbiting the asteroid

Another interesting fact about this asteroid is that it has two moons orbiting it. Their orbits are complex due to the asteroid’s odd shape, but with those modeled the team could make use of this data to calculate the asteroid’s mass, which was less than previously estimated.

Future studies of Kleopatra will use the upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) to look at it in even more detail. The adaptive optics system placed on the new telescope will use a deformed mirror to reduce the distortion by the atmosphere, enabling it to observe distant objects like the asteroid with better focus.

“I can’t wait to point the ELT at Kleopatra, to see if there are more moons and refine their orbits to detect small changes,” said Marchis. The research is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.