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Here's something unusual. I saw some asteroids in an
astronomer's office, and was captivated by the form of this one.
Asteroid 216 Kleopatra orbits the sun as part of the asteroid belt,
and it's 135 miles long by 58 miles wide (217 x 94km). In the
year 2000 it was scanned by the huge radio telescope at Arecibo
Observatory (reported here by Space Science News), and since then
scientists have been puzzling about its peculiar "dog-bone" shape.
The reflectiveness of Kleopatra's surface suggests that it is mostly
metallic, and since iron is the most common metal in the solar system,
it's probably mostly ferrous. To match this more closely, instead
of printing it in the composite metal I usually use, I've cast it
in a steel that's about 99.5% iron.
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I've made only 10 asteroids this year. Each is unique, with
fissures and occasional pits caused by thermal stress as the steel
cools from red heat. They're solid metal, hand-finished with an
oil patina, and if I'd known how nice they would be, I'd have
made more. As an artifact it's tremendously satisfying, with a
sleek, heavy, authoritative form. And then to think of it in space, the
size of New Jersey...well.
Dr. Steven
Ostro of the NASA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who led the project that observed this
body, kindly provided me with the data describing Kleopatra.
At left from the top: raw radar data, reconstructed images, and the
shape model derived from them.
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This isn't currently available for purchase...how did you get to this page, anyway?
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