Claudia (
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 ...
: 311 Claudia) is a typical
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.
...
.
It was discovered by
Auguste Charlois
Auguste Honoré Charlois (November 26, 1864 – March 26, 1910) was a French astronomer who discovered 99 asteroids while working at the Nice Observatory in southeastern France.
Asteroid Discovery
His first discovery was the asteroid 267 Tirz ...
on 11 June 1891 in
Nice
Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative c ...
. The name was suggested to Charlois by the amateur astronomer
Arthur Mee
Arthur Henry Mee (21 July 187527 May 1943) was an English writer, journalist and educator. He is best known for ''The Harmsworth Self-Educator'', ''The Children's Encyclopædia'', ''The Children's Newspaper'', and ''The King's England''. The ...
of Cardiff, Wales, to commemorate Mee's wife, Claudia.
311 Claudia is one of the Koronis family of asteroids. A group of astronomers, including
Lucy D'Escoffier Crespo da Silva and
Richard P. Binzel, used observations made between 1998 through 2000 to determine the spin-vector alignment of these asteroids. The collaborative work resulted in the creation of 61 new individual rotation lightcurves to augment previous published observations.
[Slivan, S. M., Binzel, R. P., Crespo da Silva, L. D., Kaasalainen, M., Lyndaker, M. M., Krco, M.: "Spin vectors in the Koronis family: comprehensive results from two independent analyses of 213 rotation lightcurves",''Icarus'', 162, 2003, pp. 285–307.]
References
External links
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000311
Discoveries by Auguste Charlois
Minor planets named for people
Named minor planets
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