background asteroid
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 ...
, approximately 46 kilometers in diameter, 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 ...
. It was discovered on 20 November 1925, by astronomer
Karl Reinmuth
Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth (4 April 1892 in Heidelberg – 6 May 1979 in Heidelberg) was a German astronomer and a prolific discoverer of 395 minor planets.
Scientific career
From 1912 to 1957, Reinmuth was working as an astronomer at the Lande ...
at the
Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory
Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory (german: Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl) is a historic astronomical observatory located near the summit of the Königstuhl hill in the city of Heidelberg in Germany. The predecessor of the curre ...
in southwest Germany and assigned provisional designation . It is named after the flowering plant ''
forsythia
''Forsythia'' , is a genus of flowering plants in the olive family Oleaceae. There are about 11 species, mostly native to eastern Asia, but one native to southeastern Europe. ''Forsythia'' – also one of the plant's common names – is ...
'', and marks the beginning of a sequence of 28 thematically named asteroids by the discoverer.
Orbit and classification
''Forsytia'' is a non-
family
Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...
Raoul Behrend
This is a list of minor-planet discoverers credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of one or several minor planets (such as near-Earth and main-belt asteroids, Jupiter trojans and distant objects). , the discovery of 612,011 numb ...