* Astronomy

Armagh Astronomer's Asteroid Discovered to be Double

Nearly 50 years ago, Dr David Andrews, a former Astronomer at the Armagh Observatory, discovered a new minor planet or asteroid. It was discovered on the night of 25th January 1965, and the object eventually received an official number (1727) and the name "Mette", named by the discoverer in honour of his wife, "for her tolerance of my nocturnal working hours and for the many months spent away from home". Very recently, astronomers B. Warner, R. Stephens and A. Harris, working in the USA, have reported CCD photometric observations of the same asteroid, which suggest that the object is a double or binary system. The two components of the system revolve around their common centre of gravity with a period of just over 21 hours, the pair orbiting the Sun in an elliptical orbit with a period of around 2.5 years.
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