1617 Alschmitt, provisional designation , is an assumed 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.
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from in the outer parts of the
main 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 30 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 20 March 1952, by French astronomer Louis Boyer at
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 Algeria, Northern Africa, and named after French astronomer
Alfred Schmitt
Alfred Schmitt (30 November 1907 – 2 April 1973) was a French astronomer. Schmitt worked at Algiers Observatory in the 1930s and 1940s and at the Royal Observatory in Uccle, Belgium in the 1950s. From 1955 to 1958 he was also director of the ...