1040 Klumpkea, provisional designation ', is a Tirela
asteroid
An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere.
...
from the outer regions of the
asteroid belt
The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...
, approximately in diameter. It was discovered on 20 January 1925, by Russian–French astronomer
Benjamin Jekhowsky
Benjamin Jekhowsky ( ru , Вениамин Павлович Жеховский, born 1881 in Saint-Petersburg (Russia), died in 1975, Encausse-les-Thermes (France)) was a Russian–French astronomer, born in Saint-Petersburg in a noble family o ...
at the
Algiers Observatory
The Algiers Observatory was built in the late 19th century in the Algiers suburb of Bouzaréah, Algeria, North Africa. It participated in the Astrographic Catalogue project, taking the zone between -2 and +4 degrees to expose 1,260 plates between ...
in North Africa. This highly elongated asteroid is the largest member of the stony Tirela family – also known as the Klumpkea family – and has a longer than average
rotation period
The rotation period of a celestial object (e.g., star, gas giant, planet, moon, asteroid) may refer to its sidereal rotation period, i.e. the time that the object takes to complete a single revolution around its axis of rotation relative to the ...
of 59.2 hours. It was named after American astronomer
Dorothea Klumpke
Dorothea Klumpke Roberts (August 9, 1861 in San Francisco – October 5, 1942 in San Francisco) was an American astronomer. She was Director of the Bureau of Measurements at the Paris Observatory and was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honn ...
.
Orbit and classification
''Klumpkea'' is the largest member of the Tirela family (), a large
asteroid family
An asteroid family is a population of asteroids that share similar proper orbital elements, such as semimajor axis, eccentricity, and orbital inclination. The members of the families are thought to be fragments of past asteroid collisions. An a ...
of more than a thousand members which has been further divided into 8 different subclusters. The family is named after 1400 Tirela. Alternatively it is also known as the Klumpkea family by
Milani Milani (or Milāni) is an Italian surname. Notable people with the surname include:
*Abbas Milani (born 1949), Iranian-American historian and author
*Alfredo Milani (born 1924), Italian motorcycle racer
*Andrea Milani, several people
** Andrea Mila ...
and
Knežević Knežević ( sr, Кнежевић) is a Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Bosnian surname, derived from the title of '' knez''. It may refer to:
* House of Knežević, Croatian noble family
Knežević is the eighth most frequent surname in C ...