(8440) Wigeon
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Asteroid (8440) Wigeon |
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| Properties of the orbit ( animation ) | |
| Orbit type | Middle main belt asteroid |
| Asteroid family | Gefion family |
| Major semi-axis | 2.7803 AU |
| eccentricity | 0.1411 |
| Perihelion - aphelion | 2.3881 AU - 3.1725 AU |
| Inclination of the orbit plane | 7.7365 ° |
| Length of the ascending node | 284.4126 ° |
| Argument of the periapsis | 27.9462 ° |
| Sidereal period | 4.64 a |
| Mean orbital velocity | 17.86 km / s |
| Physical Properties | |
| Absolute brightness | 13.1 mag |
| history | |
| Explorer |
Cornelis Johannes van Houten , Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld , Tom Gehrels |
| Date of discovery | October 27, 1977 |
| Another name | 1017 T-3 , 1986 RZ 2 |
| Source: Unless otherwise stated, the data comes from JPL Small-Body Database Browser . The affiliation to an asteroid family is automatically determined from the AstDyS-2 database . Please also note the note on asteroid items. | |
(8440) Wigeon is an asteroid of the central main belt that was discovered on October 27, 1977 by the Dutch astronomer couple Cornelis Johannes van Houten and Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld . The discovery took place during the 3rd Trojan survey, during which Tom Gehrels surveyed field plates recorded by the 120 cm Oschin Schmidt telescope of the Palomar observatory at the University of Leiden , 17 years after the start of the Palomar-Leiden- Surveys .
The asteroid belongs to the Gefion family, a group of asteroids of the central main belt named after (1272) Gefion . The group used to be called the Ceres family (after (1) Ceres , Vincenzo Zappalà 1995) and the Minerva family (after (93) Minerva , AstDyS-2 database). The timeless (non- osculating ) orbital elements of (8440) Wigeon are almost identical to those of the two smaller ones, assuming the absolute brightness of 15.4 and 16.2 compared to 13.1, asteroids (139692) 2001 QU 214 and ( 298655) 2004 CS 2 .
(8440) Wigeon is named after the wigeon ( Anas penelope ), a duck bird that belongs to the subgenus Mareca (in English Wigeon ). At the time the asteroid was named on April 2, 1999, the wigeon was a winter guest on the Dutch Blue List of Important Birds, which was published in 1994 together with the Dutch Red List of Endangered Birds. Those asteroids from the Palomar surveys that are named after birds bear almost exclusively the species name in scientific writing. In the case of (8440) Wigeon this was not possible because there is already an asteroid called Penelope . (201) Penelope , discovered in 1879, is named after Penelope , the wife of Odysseus from Greek mythology .
Web links
- (8440) Wigeon in the database of the "Asteroids - Dynamic Site" (AstDyS-2, English).
- (8440) Wigeon in the Small-Body Database of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena , California (English)
- Discovery Circumstances by (8440) Wigeon according to the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge , Massachusetts (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ The family status of the asteroids in the AstDyS-2 database (English, HTML; 51.4 MB)