Aquitania (

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 ...

: 387 Aquitainia), provisional designation , is a Postremian

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. ...

from the central regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 101 kilometers in diameter. Discovered by Fernand Courty at the Bordeaux Observatory in 1894, it was named for the French region of Aquitaine, the former province of

Gallia Aquitania Gallia Aquitania ( , ), also known as Aquitaine or Aquitaine Gaul, was a province of the Roman Empire. It lies in present-day southwest France, where it gives its name to the modern region of Aquitaine. It was bordered by the provinces of Gallia ...

in the ancient Roman Empire.

Discovery

''Aquitania'' was discovered by French astronomer Fernand Courty at the Bordeaux Observatory on 5 March 1894. It was second of his two asteroid discoveries. The first was

384 Burdigala Burdigala (minor planet designation: 384 Burdigala) is a typical Main belt asteroid. It was discovered by F. Courty on 11 February 1894 in Bordeaux. It was the first of his two asteroid discoveries. The other was 387 Aquitania. Burdigala is the ...

Classification and orbit

''Aquitania'' is the largest member of the Postrema family (), a mid-sized central

asteroid family An asteroid family is a population of asteroids that share similar proper orbital elements, such as semimajor axis, eccentricity, and orbital inclination. The members of the families are thought to be fragments of past asteroid collisions. An a ...

of little more than 100 members. It orbits the Sun in the

central Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...

main-belt at a distance of 2.1–3.4 AU once every 4 years and 6 months (1,657 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.24 and an inclination of 18 ° with respect to the ecliptic.

Physical characteristics

In the Tholen and

SMASS classification An asteroid spectral type is assigned to asteroids based on their emission spectrum, color, and sometimes albedo. These types are thought to correspond to an asteroid's surface composition. For small bodies that are not internally differentiat ...

, ''Aquitania'' is an S-type and

L-type asteroid L-type asteroids are relatively uncommon asteroids with a strongly reddish spectrum shortwards of 0.75 μm, and a featureless flat spectrum longwards of this. In comparison with the K-type asteroid, K-type, they exhibit a more reddish spectrum at ...

, respectively. Several rotational lightcurves of ''Aquitania'' have been obtained from photometric observations since the 1980s. Lightcurve analysis gave a consolidated

rotation period The rotation period of a celestial object (e.g., star, gas giant, planet, moon, asteroid) may refer to its sidereal rotation period, i.e. the time that the object takes to complete a single revolution around its axis of rotation relative to the ...

of 24.144 hours with a brightness variation between 0.09 and 0.25 magnitude (). According to the surveys carried out by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite IRAS, the Japanese Akari satellite and the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, ''Aquitania'' measures between 97.33 and 105.06 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo between 0.174 and 0.203. The ''Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link'' adopts the results obtained by IRAS, that is an albedo of 0.19 and a diameter of 100.51 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 7.44.

Naming

This minor planet was named for the Latin name of the French region of Aquitaine. Under Caesar the Roman region of

consisted of the country between the Pyrenees mountains and Garonne river. The region was later expanded to the Loire and Allier rivers under Augustus. The official naming citation was mentioned in '' The Names of the Minor Planets'' by Paul Herget in 1955 ().

References

External links

Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB)
query form

)
Dictionary of Minor Planet Names
Google books

– Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend

– Minor Planet Center * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Aquitania 000387 Discoveries by Fernand Courty Named minor planets 000387 000387 18940305