Lamberta (

minor planet designation A formal minor-planet designation is, in its final form, a number–name combination given to a minor planet (asteroid, centaur, trans-Neptunian object and dwarf planet but not comet). Such designation always features a leading number (catalog or ...

: 187 Lamberta) is a

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 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 Corsican-born French astronomer

Jérôme Eugène Coggia Jérôme Eugène Coggia (18 February 1849 – 15 January 1919) was a 19th-century French astronomer and discoverer of asteroids and comets, who was born in the Corsican town of Ajaccio. Working at the Marseille Observatory from 1866 to 1917, ...

on April 11, 1878, and named after the astronomer

Johann Heinrich Lambert Johann Heinrich Lambert (, ''Jean-Henri Lambert'' in French; 26 or 28 August 1728 – 25 September 1777) was a polymath from the Republic of Mulhouse, generally referred to as either Swiss or French, who made important contributions to the subjec ...

. It was the second of Coggia's five asteroid discoveries. The

spectrum A spectrum (plural ''spectra'' or ''spectrums'') is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary, without gaps, across a continuum. The word was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of colors i ...

matches a classification of a

C-type asteroid C-type (carbonaceous) asteroids are the most common variety, forming around 75% of known asteroids. They are volatile-rich and distinguished by a very low albedo because their composition includes a large amount of carbon, in addition to rocks ...

, which may mean it has a composition of primitive

carbonaceous Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon makes up ...

materials. It is a dark object as indicated by the low

albedo Albedo (; ) is the measure of the diffuse reflection of sunlight, solar radiation out of the total solar radiation and measured on a scale from 0, corresponding to a black body that absorbs all incident radiation, to 1, corresponding to a body ...

and has an estimated size of about 131 km.

References

External links

* * Background asteroids Lamberta Lamberta C-type asteroids (Tholen) Ch-type asteroids (SMASS) 18780411 {{C-beltasteroid-stub