Moon
A small satellite named Dactyl orbits Ida. Dactyl, officially (243) Ida I Dactyl (/ˈdæktɨl/ DAK-til) was discovered in images taken by the Galileo spacecraft during its flyby in 1993. These images provided the first direct confirmation of an asteroid moon. At the time, it was separated from Ida by a distance of 90 kilometres (56 mi), moving in a prograde orbit. Dactyl is heavily cratered, like Ida, and consists of similar materials. Its origin is uncertain, but evidence from the flyby suggests that it originated as a fragment of the Koronis parent body.
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Famous quotes containing the word moon:
“As the moon waxes, then wanes, so at middle age do people decline.”
—Chinese proverb.
“War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“It was the most wild and desolate region we had camped in, where, if anywhere, one might expect to meet with befitting inhabitants, but I heard only the squeak of a nighthawk flitting over. The moon in her first quarter, in the fore part of the night, setting over the bare rocky hills garnished with tall, charred, and hollow stumps or shells of trees, served to reveal the desolation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)