137 Meliboea is a large, dark
main-belt 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.
...
that was discovered by Austrian astronomer
J. Palisa at the
Austrian Naval Observatory
This is a list of observatory codes (IAU codes or MPC codes) published by the Minor Planet Center. For a detailed description, ''see observations of small Solar System bodies
Observations of minor planets as well as comets and natural satellites ...
on 21 April 1874, the second of his many asteroid discoveries. It was later named after
Meliboea
In Greek mythology, Meliboea or Meliboia ( grc, Μελίβοια) was a name attributed to the following individuals:
*Meliboea, daughter of the Titan Oceanus possibly by his sister-wife Tethys. She was the Oceanid who became the mother of King ...
, the daughter of
Oceanus
In Greek mythology, Oceanus (; grc-gre, , Ancient Greek pronunciation: , also Ὠγενός , Ὤγενος , or Ὠγήν ) was a Titan son of Uranus and Gaia, the husband of his sister the Titan Tethys, and the father of the river gods a ...
and
Tethys in
Greek mythology
A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical co ...
.
[Schmadel, L. (2003:25). ''Dictionary of minor planet names''. Germany: Springer.] The largest body in the
Meliboea 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 ...
of asteroids that share similar
orbital elements
Orbital elements are the parameters required to uniquely identify a specific orbit. In celestial mechanics these elements are considered in two-body systems using a Kepler orbit. There are many different ways to mathematically describe the same ...
, only
791 Ani approaches its size. It is classified as a
C-type asteroid and may be composed of
carbonaceous
Carbon () is a chemical element with the chemical symbol, symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalence, tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent bond, covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to gro ...
materials. The spectra of the asteroid displays evidence of aqueous alteration.
[
Photometric observations of this asteroid made at the ]Torino Observatory
The Observatory of Turin ( it, Osservatorio Astronomico di Torino, links=no, also known as Pino Torinese; obs. code: 022) is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics ( it, Istituto Nazionale d ...
in Italy during 1990–1991 were used to determine a synodic 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 15.28 ± 0.02 hours.Arecibo Observatory
The Arecibo Observatory, also known as the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC) and formerly known as the Arecibo Ionosphere Observatory, is an observatory in Barrio Esperanza, Arecibo, Puerto Rico owned by the US National Science F ...
. The return signal matched an effective diameter of 144 ± 16 km. This is consistent with the asteroid dimensions computed through other means.
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Meliboea
000137
Discoveries by Johann Palisa
Named minor planets
000137
18740421