Where do the objects in the asteroid belt of the solar system come from?
High-resolution images of the chunks can now help to answer this question.
They are more diverse than expected.
Munich / Garching - Razor-sharp images from space: astronomers have captured 42 asteroids between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter more sharply than ever before. The images from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile showed "a wide range of strange shapes, from spherical to dog bones," said the European Southern Observatory (Eso) based in Garching near Munich.
What do the photos show and how can you interpret the findings?
The astronomers published a study on the objects in the so-called asteroid belt in the journal "Astronomy & Astrophysics".
The recordings could help to find out where the asteroids are coming from.
The celestial bodies can therefore be divided into a group of spherical and an elongated objects and differ significantly in terms of density: some asteroids are about as dense as coal, others are denser than diamond.
Asteroids with the lowest density arguably formed beyond Neptune
One of the authors of the study, Josef Hanus from Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, said: “We can only understand this enormous diversity in their composition if the bodies were formed in different regions of the solar system.” The results supported the assumption that the asteroids with the lowest density on the other side of Neptune were formed.
It was a first that such precise images of asteroid belts were made.
Previously, only three large asteroids in the belt were mapped in such detail in the course of space missions, said the head of the study, Pierre Vernazza from the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille in France.
Therefore, little was known about their shape and density so far.
(cg with dpa)
The “BepiColombo” space probe transmitted the first photos of the planet Mercury to Earth. With its surface consisting of large craters, it is reminiscent of the moon.