Romulus (moon)
moon of asteroid 87 Sylvia
Romulus, formal designation 87 Sylvia I, is the outer and larger moon of the main-belt asteroid 87 Sylvia. It follows an almost-circular and close-to-equatorial orbit around the asteroid. In this respect it is similar to the other Sylvian moon Remus.
Discovery and naming
Romulus was discovered in February 2001 from the Keck II telescope by Michael E. Brown and Jean-Luc Margot. Its formal designation is (87) Sylvia I; before receiving its name, it was known as S/2001 (87) 1.
The moon is named after Romulus, the mythological founder of Rome, one of the twins of Rhea Silvia raised by a wolf.
Characteristics
87 Sylvia has a low density, which indicates that it is probably a rubble pile formed when debris from a collision between its parent body and another asteroid re-accreted gravitationally. Therefore, it is likely that both Romulus and Remus, the second of Sylvia's moons, are smaller rubble piles which accreted in orbit around the main body from debris of the same collision. In this case their albedo and density are expected to be similar to Sylvia's.
Romulus's orbit is expected to be quite stable − it lies far inside Sylvia's Hill sphere (about 1/50 of Sylvia's Hill radius), but also far outside the synchronous orbit.
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This entry incorporates text from “Romulus (moon)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.