161 Athor is an
M-type 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
James Craig Watson on April 19, 1876, at the
Detroit Observatory
The Detroit Observatory is located on the corner of Observatory and Ann streets in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was built in 1854, and was the first scientific research facility at the University of Michigan and one of the oldest observatories of its ty ...
and named after
Hathor, an
Egyptian fertility goddess. It is the namesake of a proposed Athor
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 ...
, estimated to be ~3 billion years old.
[
Photometric observations of the minor planet in 2010 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 ...
of with an amplitude of in magnitude. This result is consistent with previous determinations.[ An occultation by Athor was observed, on October 15, 2002, showing an estimated diameter of .]carbonaceous chondrite
Carbonaceous chondrites or C chondrites are a class of chondritic meteorites comprising at least 8 known groups and many ungrouped meteorites. They include some of the most primitive known meteorites. The C chondrites represent only a small prop ...
s, with characteristics of ferric oxides and little or no hydrated minerals.[
]
References
External links
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Discoveries by James Craig Watson
Named minor planets
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