(8591) Excubitor
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Asteroid (8591) Excubitor |
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|---|---|
| Properties of the orbit ( animation ) | |
| Orbit type | Main outer belt asteroid |
| Asteroid family | Themis family |
| Major semi-axis | 3.1574 AU |
| eccentricity | 0.1893 |
| Perihelion - aphelion | 2.5597 AU - 3.7550 AU |
| Inclination of the orbit plane | 2.0827 ° |
| Length of the ascending node | 82.0666 ° |
| Argument of the periapsis | 250.9818 ° |
| Sidereal period | 5.61 a |
| Mean orbital velocity | 16.74 km / s |
| Physical Properties | |
| Absolute brightness | 12.8 mag |
| history | |
| Explorer |
Cornelis Johannes van Houten , Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld , Tom Gehrels |
| Date of discovery | September 24, 1960 |
| Another name | 6543 PL , 1974 CD |
| 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. | |
(8591) Excubitor is an asteroid of the outer main belt , which was discovered on September 24, 1960 by the Dutch astronomer couple Cornelis Johannes van Houten and Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld . The discovery came about as part of the Palomar-Leiden survey , during which Tom Gehrels examined field plates recorded at the University of Leiden with the 120 cm Oschin Schmidt telescope of the Palomar observatory .
The asteroid belongs to the Themis family, a group of asteroids named after (24) Themis . According to the SMASS classification ( Small Main-Belt Asteroid Spectroscopic Survey ), a spectroscopic study by Gianluca Masi , Sergio Foglia and Richard P. Binzel at (8591) Excubitor assumed a dark surface, so it could, roughly speaking, be trade a C asteroid .
The timeless (non- osculating ) orbital elements of (8591) Excubitor are almost identical to those of the two smaller ones, assuming the absolute magnitude of 14.9 and 16.1 compared to 12.8, asteroids (76755) 2000 KD 1 and ( 228255) 1999 ET 7 .
(8591) Excubitor is named after the gray shrike whose scientific name is Lanius excubitor . At the time the asteroid was named on February 2, 1999, the northern gray shrike was on the Dutch Red List of Endangered Species . The first letters of the asteroids (8585) to (8600) form the phrase Per aspera ad astra .
Web links
- (8591) Excubitor in the database of the "Asteroids - Dynamic Site" (AstDyS-2, English).
- (8591) Excubitor 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 of (8591) Excubitor according to the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge , Massachusetts (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Gianluca Masi, Sergio Foglia, Richard P. Binzel: Search for Unusual Spectroscopic Candidates Among 40313 minor planets from the 3rd Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Moving Object Catalog . (English)
- ↑ subdivision of asteroids to S-types, C-types and V-types (English)
- ↑ The family status of the asteroids in the AstDyS-2 database (English, HTML; 51.4 MB)