Scientists have found the first triple-lobed asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter — and it has a small moon to boot.
The asteroid in question is 44 Nysa, which was discovered all the way back in 1857. Of course, back then it was just a pinprick of light in the sky, and subsequent observations — including some from the Hubble Space Telescope — had failed to tell us much about Nysa. Those previous observations suggested Nysa might be bi-lobed, like many asteroids and comets such as asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson, which NASA's Lucy mission flew past in 2025.
However, new joint observations by the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) on Mount Graham in Arizona and the Very Large Telescope (VT) on Paranal mounta...
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