Themis ( minor planet designation: 24 Themis) is one of the largest asteroids in 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 ...

. It is also the largest member of the Themistian family. It was discovered by

Annibale de Gasparis Annibale de Gasparis (9 November 1819, Bugnara – 21 March 1892, Naples; ) was an Italian astronomer, known for discovering asteroids and his contributions to theoretical astronomy. Biography De Gasparis was born in 1819 in Bugnara to Ang ...

on 5 April 1853. It is named after

Themis In Greek mythology and religion, Themis (; grc, Θέμις, Themis, justice, law, custom) is one of the twelve Titan children of Gaia and Uranus, and the second wife of Zeus. She is the goddess and personification of justice, divine order, fai ...

, the personification of natural law and divine order in

Greek mythology A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities ...

. Not to be confused with

269 Justitia Justitia (minor planet designation: 269 Justitia) is a fairly sizeable main belt asteroid. It was discovered by Johann Palisa on 21 September 1887 in Vienna. The asteroid was named after Justitia, the Roman equivalent of Themis, the Greek goddes ...

, named for

Justitia Lady Justice ( la, Iustitia) is an allegorical personification of the moral force in judicial systems. Her attributes are scales, a sword and sometimes a blindfold. She often appears as a pair with Prudentia. Lady Justice originates from the ...

, Themis' Roman name.

Discovery and observations

24 Themis was discovered on 5 April 1853 by

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

, though it was given its name by fellow Italian astronomer

Angelo Secchi Angelo Secchi (; 28 June 1818 – 26 February 1878) was an Italian Catholic priest, astronomer from the Italian region of Emilia. He was director of the observatory at the Pontifical Gregorian University (then called the Roman College) for ...

. The asteroid was named after

, the Greek goddess of law. Gravitational perturbations in the orbit of Themis were used to calculate the mass of

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth t ...

as early as 1875. On 24 December 1975, 24 Themis had a close encounter with

2296 Kugultinov 2296 Kugultinov, provisional designation , is a carbonaceous Themistian asteroid from the outer region of the asteroid belt, approximately 20 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 18 January 1975, by Russian astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh at ...

with a minimum distance of . By analyzing the perturbation of Kugultinov's orbit due to the gravitational pull of Themis, the mass of Themis was determined to be approximately

solar masses The solar mass () is a standard unit of mass in astronomy, equal to approximately . It is often used to indicate the masses of other stars, as well as stellar clusters, nebulae, galaxies and black holes. It is approximately equal to the mass of ...

( Earth masses).

Orbit and rotation

Themis is in an

elliptical orbit In astrodynamics or celestial mechanics, an elliptic orbit or elliptical orbit is a Kepler orbit with an eccentricity of less than 1; this includes the special case of a circular orbit, with eccentricity equal to 0. In a stricter sense, i ...

around the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

with an

eccentricity Eccentricity or eccentric may refer to: * Eccentricity (behavior), odd behavior on the part of a person, as opposed to being "normal" Mathematics, science and technology Mathematics * Off-Centre (geometry), center, in geometry * Eccentricity (g ...

of 0.1306 and an

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 Eart ...

of 0.76°. It has an

orbital period The orbital period (also revolution period) is the amount of time a given astronomical object takes to complete one orbit around another object. In astronomy, it usually applies to planets or asteroids orbiting the Sun, moons orbiting planets ...

of 5.54 years. The distance between Themis and the Sun ranges from 2.71 AU at

perihelion An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any elli ...

and 3.55 AU at

aphelion An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any ell ...

, with a mean distance of 3.1302 AU. Themis is part 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 ...

of asteroids, which is located in the outer part 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 ...

. The family consists of a core of large objects surrounded by a cloud of smaller objects; 24 Themis is a member of the core.

Surface materials

Ice

On 7 October 2009, the presence of

water ice Water ice could refer to: * Ice formed by water (as opposed to other substances) *The alternate term for various similar frozen fruit-flavoured desserts: ** Italian ice primarily in Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley **Sorbet Sorbet (), also ...

was confirmed on the surface of this asteroid using

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

’s Infrared Telescope Facility. The surface of the asteroid appears completely covered in ice. As this ice layer is sublimated, it may be getting replenished by a reservoir of ice under the surface. Scientists hypothesize that some of the first water brought to

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

was delivered by asteroid impacts after the collision that produced the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

. The presence of ice on 24 Themis supports this theory. Because of its proximity to the sun (~3.2 AU), the widespread ice on the surface of 24 Themis is somewhat unexpected. The surface ice may be replenished by a sub-surface reservoir of water or

impact gardening Impact gardening is the process by which impact events stir the outermost crusts of moons and other celestial objects with no atmospheres. In the particular case of the Moon, this is more often known as lunar gardening. Planetary bodies lacking a ...

—a lunar phenomenon in which the moon overturns surface material at a rate of 1 m/ Gyr. An alternative mechanism to explain the presence of water ice on 24 Themis is similar to the hypothesized formation of water on the surface of the Moon by

solar wind The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sun, called the corona. This plasma mostly consists of electrons, protons and alpha particles with kinetic energy between . The composition of the sol ...

. Trace amounts of water would be continuously produced by high-energy solar protons impinging oxide minerals present at the surface of the asteroid. The

hydroxyl In chemistry, a hydroxy or hydroxyl group is a functional group with the chemical formula and composed of one oxygen atom covalently bonded to one hydrogen atom. In organic chemistry, alcohols and carboxylic acids contain one or more hydro ...

surface groups (S–OH) formed by the collision of protons () with

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as ...

atoms present at oxide surface (S=O) can further be converted in water molecules () adsorbed onto the oxide minerals surface. The chemical rearrangement supposed at the oxide surface could be schematically written as follows: :2 S-OH → S=O + S + or,
:2 S-OH → S–O–S +
where S represents the oxide surface.

Organics

Organic compounds were also detected on the surface of Themis
pdf version
accessed 28 Feb. 2018). in the form of

tholin Tholins (after the Greek (') "hazy" or "muddy"; from the ancient Greek word meaning "sepia ink") are a wide variety of organic compounds formed by solar ultraviolet or cosmic ray irradiation of simple carbon-containing compounds such as carbon ...

s, high-molecular weight organics found in the outer solar system, distinguished by a brown or reddish color in optical spectra. Compounds found in the spectra of Themis include ice tholin (the residual of an irradiated mixture of water ice and ethane),

asphaltite Asphaltite (also known as uintahite, asphaltum, gilsonite or oil sands) is a naturally occurring soluble solid hydrocarbon, a form of asphalt (or bitumen) with a relatively high melting temperature. Its large-scale production occurs in the Uintah ...

, carbonaceous meteorite material, and

polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon A polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) is a class of organic compounds that is composed of multiple aromatic rings. The simplest representative is naphthalene, having two aromatic rings and the three-ring compounds anthracene and phenanthrene. ...

References

External links

Asteroid Themis has 'frosted surface'

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Themis 000024 Discoveries by Annibale de Gasparis Named minor planets 000024 000024 18530405 Extraterrestrial water