Cleopatra and 216 Kleopatra Asteroid - Versailles, France
Posted by: 
Metro2
N 48° 48.512 E 002° 06.558
31U E 434602 N 5406554
Cleopatra... the last Pharoah of Egypt... and the 216 Kleopatra Asteroid which is unusual since the asteroid has two of its own moons!
Waymark Code: WMD084
Location: Île-de-France, France
Date Posted: 11/01/2011
Views: 14
Cleopatra (69 BC - 30 BC) was the last member of the Ptolemeic dynasty in Egypt. Due to her turbulent life, most people know about her from movies, plays and books. She made alliances with Rome through her marriage with Julius Ceasar...and then became an enemy when she allied (and married) Marc Anthony.
Known for the probably mythical death by an asp, she is depicted in this 17th century marble sculpture naked and placing the asp to her breast.
The artist is anonymous.
Read more about Cleopatra (whose full name was Cleopatra VII Philopator) at (
visit link)
As for the 216 Kleopatra Asteroid, Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"216 Kleopatra ( /?kli??'pætr?/) is a trinary main-belt asteroid that was discovered by Johann Palisa on April 10, 1880, in Pola. It is named after Cleopatra, Queen of Ancient Egypt.
Kleopatra has an unusual shape that has been compared to a dog's bone. This bilobate shape was revealed by adaptive optics on the ESO 3.6 m Telescope at La Silla, run by the European Southern Observatory. By bouncing radar signals off the asteroid, a team of astronomers at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico were able to develop a more detailed computer model of its shape, which confirmed the earlier results.
Kleopatra is a relatively large asteroid, measuring 217 × 94 × 81 km. Calculations from its radar albedo and the orbits of its moons show it to be a rubble pile, a loose amalgam of metal, rock, and 30–50% empty space by volume, likely due to an disruptive impact prior to the impact that created its moons.
Satellite systemIn September 2008, Franck Marchis and his collaborators announced that using the Keck Observatory's adaptive optics system, they had discovered two moons orbiting Kleopatra."