702 Alauda


702 Alauda, provisional designation, is a carbonaceous asteroid and binary system from the outer asteroid belt, approximately 190 kilometers in diameter. It is the parent body of the Alauda family. Discovered in 1910 by German astronomer Joseph Helffrich at Heidelberg Observatory, it was named after the lark. Its small moon, named Pichi üñëm, was discovered in 2007.

Satellite

Alauda's satellite Pichi üñëm, provisionally known as, was discovered from observations using adaptive-optics imaging with the European Southern Observatory 8-m Very Large Telescope on Cerro Paranal, Chile. It is about 3.5 km in diameter and orbits Alauda in a nearly circular orbit at a distance of. Pichi üñëm takes 4.91 days to complete one orbit.
It was named Pichi üñëm, meaning "little bird" in the Mapuche language of Chile, the country from which the moon was discovered.

Orbital characteristics

Alauda has been identified as the largest member of the Alauda family, a dynamical family of bright carbonaceous asteroids with more than a thousand known members. Other members of this family include: 581 Tauntonia, 1101 Clematis, 1838 Ursa, 3139 Shantou, 3325 TARDIS, 4368 Pillmore, 5360 Rozhdestvenskij, 5815 Shinsengumi, and many others. Alauda's moon may be a result of the collision that created the asteroid family.

Physical characteristics

The discovery and tracking of Alauda's moon enabled Alauda's mass to be determined. The discoverers of the moon, Patricio Rojo and Jean-Luc Margot, estimated Alauda's mass to be kg and its density to be g/cm³.

Occultations

Alauda has been observed to occult stars on several occasions, providing important information on its size and shape. It produced occultations on 2001-07-12 and 2004-04-21. It may have occulted an apparent magnitude 9.5 star in the constellation of Gemini on 2009-10-17 at 08:18 UT. This event should have been visible from Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile.