2039 Payne-Gaposchkin, provisional designation , is a carbonaceous Themistian asteroid from the outer regions of the
asteroid 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, c ...
, approximately 14 kilometers in diameter. The asteroid was discovered on 14 February 1974, by astronomers at the George R. Agassiz Station of the
Harvard College Observatory
The Harvard College Observatory (HCO) is an institution managing a complex of buildings and multiple instruments used for astronomical research by the Harvard University Department of Astronomy. It is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United St ...
in Massachusetts, United States. It was named for British–American astronomer
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (born Cecilia Helena Payne; – ) was a British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist who proposed in her 1925 doctoral thesis that stars were composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Her groundbreaking conclus ...
.
Classification and orbit
''Payne-Gaposchkin'' is a member of the
Themis family The Themis family (''adj. Themistian''; ) is a family of carbonaceous asteroids located in the outer portion of the asteroid belt, at a mean distance of 3.13 AU from the Sun. It is one of the largest families with over 4700 known members, and con ...
, a dynamical family of carbonaceous asteroids with nearly coplanar ecliptical orbits, located in the