Latest Franck Marchis Stories

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Watching active volcanic eruptions should be done so from a safe distance. Observing active eruptions here on Earth can be easily accomplished from the comfort of your home with proper equipment. But observing an Earthen volcanic eruption from home is nothing when compared to what a group of California researchers have been privy to. Using an ingenious combination of ground-based telescopic surveys and archival data, the Golden...

Since the discovery of its two moons, the triple asteroid Minerva has been the focus of space and ground-based telescope studies that have attempted to unravel the secrets of this intriguing system. A multiple-telescope campaign has now revealed that Minerva is unusually round for an asteroid, and has a possibly unique structure.  The campaign to “weigh” the asteroid and derive its density and other characteristics was undertaken by an international team of planetary astronomers led...

The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is often depicted as a dull zone of dead rocks with an occasional wayward speedster smashing through on its way toward the sun.A new study appearing in the Aug. 26 issue of the journal Nature paints a different picture, one of slow but steady change, where sunlight gradually drives asteroids to split in two and move far apart to become independent asteroids among the millions orbiting the sun. "This shows that asteroids are not inert, dead...

A record two-hour observation of Jupiter using a superior technique to remove atmospheric blur has produced the sharpest whole-planet picture ever taken from the ground. The series of 265 snapshots obtained with the Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics Demonstrator (MAD) prototype instrument mounted on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) reveal changes in Jupiter's smog-like haze, probably in response to a planet-wide upheaval more than a year ago.Being able to correct wide field images for...

Combining precise observations obtained by ESO's Very Large Telescope with those gathered by a network of smaller telescopes, astronomers have described in unprecedented detail the double asteroid Antiope, which is shown to be a pair of rubble-pile chunks of material, of about the same size, whirling around one another in a perpetual pas de deux. The two components are egg-shaped despite their very small sizes. The asteroid (90) Antiope was discovered in 1866 by Robert Luther from Dusseldorf,...

Berkeley -- A bound pair of icy comets similar to the dirty snowballs circling outside the orbit of Neptune has been found lurking in the shadow of Jupiter. Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, working with colleagues in France and at the Keck Telescope in Hawaii, have calculated the density of a known binary asteroid system that shares Jupiter's orbit, and concluded that Patroclus and its companion probably are composed mostly of water ice covered by a patina of dirt....

One of the thousands of minor planets orbiting the Sun has been found to have its own mini planetary system. Astronomer Franck Marchis (University of California, Berkeley, USA) and his colleagues at the Observatoire de Paris (France) [1] have discovered the first triple asteroid system - two small asteroids orbiting a larger one known since 1866 as 87 Sylvia [2]. "Since double asteroids seem to be common, people have been looking for multiple asteroid systems for a long time," said...

Berkeley -- One of the thousands of asteroids orbiting the sun has been found to have a mini planetary system of its own. University of California, Berkeley, assistant research astronomer Franck Marchis and his colleagues at the Observatoire de Paris have discovered the first triple asteroid system - two small asteroids orbiting a larger one known since 1866 as 87 Sylvia. Because 87 Sylvia was named after Rhea Sylvia, the mythical mother of the founders of Rome, Marchis proposed naming the...

Berkeley -- One of the thousands of asteroids orbiting the sun has been found to have a mini planetary system of its own. University of California, Berkeley, assistant research astronomer Franck Marchis and his colleagues at the Observatoire de Paris have discovered the first triple asteroid system - two small asteroids orbiting a larger one known since 1866 as 87 Sylvia. Because 87 Sylvia was named after Rhea Sylvia, the mythical mother of the founders of Rome, Marchis proposed naming the...

LONDON -- Scientists have spotted an asteroid with more than one moon -- the first discovery of its kind.Astronomers found a second moonlet orbiting 87 Sylvia, a heavenly body zooming around the sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to a Nature magazine report.Sylvia was previously thought to be one of 60 asteroids with just one moon, said University of California astronomer Franck Marchis, whose team made the discovery in March."We were very excited -- it was the...