Eucharis ( minor planet designation: 181 Eucharis) is a large, slowly rotating

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 ...

asteroid that was discovered by French

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

Pablo Cottenot Pablo Cottenot was a 19th-century French astronomer and discoverer of a minor planet. He worked at Marseille Observatory, but according to Édouard Stephan Édouard Jean-Marie Stephan (31 August 1837 – 31 December 1923) was a French astronom ...

on February 2, 1878, from

Marseille Observatory Marseille Observatory (french: Observatoire de Marseille) is an astronomical observatory located in Marseille, France, with a history that goes back to the early 18th century. In its 1877 incarnation, it was the discovery site of a group of gal ...

. It was his only asteroid discovery. This object was named after Eucharis, a

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

nymph A nymph ( grc, νύμφη, nýmphē, el, script=Latn, nímfi, label= Modern Greek; , ) in ancient Greek folklore is a minor female nature deity. Different from Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature, are ...

. In the

Tholen 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 differentiated ...

system, it is categorized as a stony

S-type asteroid S-type asteroids are asteroids with a spectral type that is indicative of a siliceous (i.e. stony) mineralogical composition, hence the name. They have relatively high density. Approximately 17% of asteroids are of this type, making it the secon ...

, while the Bus asteroid taxonomy system lists it as an Xk asteroid. Photometric observations of this asteroid at the Goat Mountain Astronomical Research Station in Rancho Cucamonga, California during 2007 gave a

light curve In astronomy, a light curve is a graph of light intensity of a celestial object or region as a function of time, typically with the magnitude of light received on the y axis and with time on the x axis. The light is usually in a particular frequ ...

with a leisurely rotation period of 52.23 ± 0.05 hours. This object is the namesake of a

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

of 149–778 asteroids that share similar spectral properties and orbital elements; hence they may have arisen from the same collisional event. All members have a relatively high

orbital inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object. For a satellite orbiting the Earth ...

References

External links

* * Background asteroids Eucharis Eucharis S-type asteroids (Tholen) Xk-type asteroids (SMASS) 18780202 {{S-beltasteroid-stub