3402 Wisdom, provisional designation , is a stony asteroid and

Mars-crosser A Mars-crossing asteroid (MCA, also Mars-crosser, MC) is an asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Mars. Some Mars-crossers numbered below 100000 are listed here. They include the two numbered Mars trojans 5261 Eureka and . Many databases, for in ...

on an eccentric orbit from the inner 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 in diameter. It was discovered on 5 August 1981, by American astronomer

Edward Bowell Edward L. G. "Ted" Bowell (born 1943 in London), is an American astronomer. Bowell was educated at Emanuel School London, University College, London, and the University of Paris. He was principal investigator of the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth ...

at Lowell's

Anderson Mesa Station Anderson Mesa Station is an astronomical observatory established in 1959 as a dark-sky observing site for Lowell Observatory. It is located at Anderson Mesa in Coconino County, Arizona, about 12 miles southeast of Lowell's main campus on Mars H ...

near Flagstaff, Arizona, in the United States. The presumed bright

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 ...

has a rotation period of 4.99 hours. It was named after American planetary scientist

Jack Wisdom Jack Wisdom (born 1953) is a Professor of Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his B.S. from Rice University in 1976 and his Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in 1981. His research interests ar ...

Orbit and classification

''Wisdom'' is a

Mars-crossing asteroid A Mars-crossing asteroid (MCA, also Mars-crosser, MC) is an asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Mars. Some Mars-crossers numbered below 100000 are listed here. They include the two numbered Mars trojans 5261 Eureka and . Many databases, for in ...

, a member of a dynamically unstable group, located between 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 ...

and the near-Earth populations, and crossing the orbit of Mars at 1.666 AU. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 1.5–2.7 AU once every 3 years and 1 month (1,137 days; semi-major axis of 2.13 AU). Its orbit has 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 0.28 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 5 ° with respect to the

ecliptic The ecliptic or ecliptic plane is the orbital plane of the Earth around the Sun. From the perspective of an observer on Earth, the Sun's movement around the celestial sphere over the course of a year traces out a path along the ecliptic agains ...

. The body's

observation arc In observational astronomy, the observation arc (or arc length) of a Solar System body is the time period between its earliest and latest observations, used for tracing the body's path. It is usually given in days or years. The term is mostly use ...

begins with a precovery taken at Palomar Observatory in February 1977, more than 4 years prior to its official discovery observation at Anderson Mesa.

Physical characteristics

''Wisdom'' is an assumed stony

Rotation period

In October 2006, two rotational

lightcurve 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 freq ...

s of ''Wisdom'' were obtained from photometric observations at Ondřejov, Skalnaté pleso and Carbuncle Hill observatories (). Lightcurve analysis gave a well-defined rotation period of 4.9949 and 4.9951 hours with a high brightness variation of 0.75 and 0.74

magnitude Magnitude may refer to: Mathematics *Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction *Magnitude (mathematics), the relative size of an object *Norm (mathematics), a term for the size or length of a vector *Order of ...

, respectively (). A high brightness amplitude typically indicate that the body has an elongated rather than spherical shape.

Diameter and albedo

According to the survey carried out by the

NEOWISE Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE, observatory code C51, Explorer 92 and SMEX-6) is a NASA infrared astronomy space telescope in the Explorers Program. It was launched in December 2009, and placed in hibernation mode in February 201 ...

mission of NASA's

Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE, observatory code C51, Explorer 92 and SMEX-6) is a NASA infrared astronomy space telescope in the Explorers Program. It was launched in December 2009, and placed in hibernation mode in February 201 ...

, ''Wisdom'' measures 2.05 and 2.50 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an

albedo Albedo (; ) is the measure of the diffuse reflection of 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 that refl ...

of 0.32 and 0.283, respectively. The ''Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link'' assumes a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20 and derives a diameter of 2.59 kilometers based on an

absolute magnitude Absolute magnitude () is a measure of the luminosity of a celestial object on an inverse logarithmic astronomical magnitude scale. An object's absolute magnitude is defined to be equal to the apparent magnitude that the object would have if it ...

of 15.34. With a mean-diameter of approximately 2.5 kilometers, ''Wisdom'' is one of the smaller mid-sized Mars-crossing asteroids. It is assumed that there are up to 10 thousand Mars-crossers larger than 1 kilometer. The largest members of this dynamical group are

132 Aethra Aethra ( minor planet designation: 132 Aethra) is a metallic asteroid and Mars-crosser on an eccentric orbit from the asteroid belt. It measures approximately 40 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered by James Craig Watson in 1873 and is th ...

, 323 Brucia, 2204 Lyyli and 512 Taurinensis, which measure between 43 and 25 kilometers in diameter.

Naming

This

minor planet According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term ''mino ...

was named after

(born 1953), a dynamicist and professor of planetary sciences at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

. Wisdom pioneered in the study of the dynamics and long-term stability of the

Solar System The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...

, and demonstrated the dynamical mechanism for the clearing of asteroid in the

Kirkwood gaps A Kirkwood gap is a gap or dip in the distribution of the semi-major axis, semi-major axes (or equivalently of the orbital periods) of the orbits of asteroid belt, main-belt asteroids. They correspond to the locations of orbital resonances with ...

of the asteroid belt. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 2 February 1988 ().

Notes

References

External links

Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB)
query form

)
Dictionary of Minor Planet Names
Google books

– Minor Planet Center * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Wisdom 003402 Discoveries by Edward L. G. Bowell Named minor planets 19810805