We’ve spotted a huge asteroid spinning impossibly fast
Author Fullname; Leah Crane
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has spotted the fastest-rotating large asteroid ever seen. Despite measuring more than half a kilometre across, this asteroid spins about once every 1.9 minutes – a speed once thought to be impossible.
Dmitrii Vavilov at the University of Washington in Seattle and his colleagues found this asteroid, along with several other surprisingly speedy rotators, in the data from Rubin’s first nine nights of observations in late April and early May 2025. Vavilov...