Dembowska (

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 ...

: 349 Dembowska) is a large asteroid of the main belt, discovered on 9 December 1892, by the French astronomer

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 ...

while working at the observatory 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 ...

, France. It is named in honor of the Baron

Hercules Dembowski Ercole (Hercules) Dembowski (12 January 1812 – 19 January 1881) was an Italian astronomer. He was born in Milan. He inherited the title of "Baron" as the son of Jan Dembowski (Dębowski), one of Napoleon's Polish generals. He served in t ...

, an Italian astronomer who made significant contributions to research on double and multiple stars. Orbiting just inside the prominent 7:3 resonance with Jupiter, 349 Dembowska is among the largest asteroids in the main belt with an estimated diameter of ~140 km. It has a rotational period of 4.7012 hours, and is classified as an

R-type asteroid R-type asteroids are moderately bright, relatively uncommon inner-belt asteroids that are spectrally intermediate between the V and A-type asteroids. The spectrum shows distinct olivine and pyroxene features at 1 and 2 micrometres, with a possibil ...

for the presence of strong absorption lines in

olivine The mineral olivine () is a magnesium iron silicate with the chemical formula . It is a type of nesosilicate or orthosilicate. The primary component of the Earth's upper mantle, it is a common mineral in Earth's subsurface, but weathers quickl ...

and

pyroxene The pyroxenes (commonly abbreviated to ''Px'') are a group of important rock-forming inosilicate minerals found in many igneous and metamorphic rocks. Pyroxenes have the general formula , where X represents calcium (Ca), sodium (Na), iron (Fe II) ...

with little or no metals. It may have undergone partial melting/ differentiation. 349 Dembowska has an unusually high

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 ...

of 0.384. Of the asteroids with a diameter greater than 75 km, only

4 Vesta Vesta (minor-planet designation: 4 Vesta) is one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, with a mean diameter of . It was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers on 29 March 1807 and is named after Vesta, the ...

has a higher known albedo. Dembowska and

16 Psyche 16 Psyche () is a large M-type asteroid discovered by the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis on 17 March 1852 and named after the Greek goddess Psyche. The prefix "16" signifies that it was the sixteenth minor planet in order of dis ...

have orbits that repeat themselves almost exactly every five years in respect to their position to the Sun and Earth. In 1988 a search for satellites or dust orbiting this asteroid was performed using the

UH88 The University of Hawai'i 88-inch (2.24-meter) telescope—called UH88, UH2.2, or simply 88 by members of the local astronomical community—is situated at the Mauna Kea Observatories and operated by the University's Institute for Astronomy. It ...

telescope at the

Mauna Kea Observatories The Mauna Kea Observatories (MKO) are a group of independent astronomical research facilities and large telescope observatories that are located at the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, United States. The facilities are located ...

, but the effort came up empty. There was one occultation on 31 October 2006, and on 5 December 2007.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dembowska 000349 Discoveries by Auguste Charlois Named minor planets 000349 000349 18921209