144 Vibilia is a carbonaceous

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 central region of the asteroid belt, approximately 140 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 3 June 1875, by German–American astronomer

Christian Peters Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters (September 19, 1813 – July 18, 1890) was a German–American university teacher and astronomer at the Litchfield Observatory of Hamilton College, New York, and a pioneer in the study and visual discovery of ...

Litchfield Observatory Hamilton College is a private liberal arts college in Clinton, Oneida County, New York. It was founded as Hamilton-Oneida Academy in 1793 and was chartered as Hamilton College in 1812 in honor of inaugural trustee Alexander Hamilton, following ...

of the Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, United States. Peters named it after Vibilia, the Roman goddess of traveling, because he had recently returned from a journey across the world to observe the transit of Venus. Peters also discovered

145 Adeona Adeona ( minor planet designation: 145 Adeona) is a large asteroid from the intermediate asteroid belt, approximately in diameter. Its surface is very dark, and, based upon its classification as a C-type asteroid, is probably composed of primit ...

on the same night. The official naming citation was published by Paul Herget in '' The Names of the Minor Planets'' in 1955 ().

Orbit and classification

''Vibilia'' is the largest member and namesake of the Vibilia family, a small

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 ...

with 180 known members. It orbits the Sun in the

central Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...

main-belt at a distance of 2.0–3.3 AU once every 4 years and 4 months (1,582 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.23 and an inclination of 5 ° with respect to the ecliptic. The asteroid's observation arc begins in May 1905, at

Heidelberg Observatory Heidelberg (; Palatine German: ') is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914, of which roughly a quarter consisted of students. ...

, 30 years after its official discovery observation. It never received a

provisional designation Provisional designation in astronomy is the naming convention applied to astronomical objects immediately following their discovery. The provisional designation is usually superseded by a permanent designation once a reliable orbit has been calcu ...

. 144 Vibilia has been observed to

occult The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism a ...

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...

eleven times between 1993 and 2018. Eight of these events yielded two or more chords across the asteroid.

Physical characteristics

''Vibilia'' is a dark C-type asteroid in the Tholen taxonomy. It is also characterized as a hydrated Ch-subtype in the

SMASS classification An asteroid spectral type is assigned to asteroids based on their emission spectrum, color, and sometimes albedo. These types are thought to correspond to an asteroid's surface composition. For small bodies that are not internally differentiat ...

. This means it probably has a primitive carbonaceous composition. 13-cm radar observations of this asteroid from the

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 ...

between 1980 and 1985 were used to produce a diameter estimate of 131 km. Carry gives a diameter of 141.34 kilometers. According to the surveys carried out by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite IRAS, the Japanese Akari satellite, and NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, ''Vibilia'' measures between 131.36 and 142.38 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo between 0.05 0.06. The ''Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link'' (CALL) adopts the results obtained by IRAS, that is, an albedo of 0.0597 and a diameter of 142.38 kilometers. CALL uses an absolute magnitude of 7.92. Based upon radar data, the near surface solid density of ''Vibilia'' is 2.4. The density had been calibrated against that of

433 Eros Eros (minor planet designation: (433) Eros), provisional designation is a stony asteroid of the Amor group and the first discovered and second-largest near-Earth object with an elongated shape and a mean diameter of approximately . Visi ...

; the uncalibrated figure is 3.2 g/cm³. Carry gives a density of with a low porosity. Several well-defined rotational lightcurves of ''Vibilia'' have been obtained from photometric observations since the 1980s. Lightcurve analysis gave a

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 ...

between 13.810 and 13.88 hours with a brightness amplitude between 0.13 and 0.20 magnitude ( U=3/3/3/3). In 2016, an international study modeled a lightcurve from various photometric data sources. It gave a period of 13.82516 hours. The team also determined two

spin axis Rotation around a fixed axis is a special case of rotational motion. The fixed-axis hypothesis excludes the possibility of an axis changing its orientation and cannot describe such phenomena as wobbling or precession. According to Euler's rota ...

of (248.0°, 56.0°) and (54.0°, 48.0°) in ecliptic coordinates (λ, β) ( U/Q=n.a.).

References

External links

Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB)
query form

)
Dictionary of Minor Planet Names
Google books

– Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend

– Minor Planet Center * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Vibilia 000144 000144 Discoveries by Christian Peters Named minor planets 000144 000144 18750603