3908 Nyx is an
Amor and
Mars-crosser 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 ...
. It was discovered by
Hans-Emil Schuster on August 6, 1980, and is named after
Nyx, the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
goddess of the night, after which
Pluto
Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest ...
's
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 ...
Nix
Nix or NIX may refer to:
Places
* Nix, Alabama, an unincorporated community, United States
* Nix, Texas, a ghost town in southwestern Lampasas County, Texas, United States
* Nix (moon), a moon of Pluto
People
* Nix (surname), listing people with ...
is also named. It is 1–2 km in diameter and is a
V-type asteroid A V-type asteroid or Vestoid is an asteroid whose spectral type is that of 4 Vesta. Approximately 6% of main-belt asteroids are vestoids, with Vesta being by far the largest of them. They are relatively bright, and rather similar to the more common ...
, meaning that it may be a fragment of the asteroid
4 Vesta.
Observations
In 2000, radar observations conducted at the
Arecibo
Arecibo (; ) is a city and municipality on the northern coast of Puerto Rico, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, located north of Utuado and Ciales; east of Hatillo; and west of Barceloneta and Florida. It is about west of San Juan, th ...
and
Goldstone observatories produced a model of Nyx's shape; the asteroid can best be described as spherical but with many protruding lumps.
Name
To avoid confusion with 3908 Nyx,
Pluto
Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest ...
's moon
Nix
Nix or NIX may refer to:
Places
* Nix, Alabama, an unincorporated community, United States
* Nix, Texas, a ghost town in southwestern Lampasas County, Texas, United States
* Nix (moon), a moon of Pluto
People
* Nix (surname), listing people with ...
was changed from the initial proposal of the
classical spelling
Nyx, to Nix.
See also
*
3551 Verenia
*
4 Vesta
*
4055 Magellan
*
HED meteorite
HED meteorites are a clan (subgroup) of achondrite meteorites. HED stands for "howardite– eucrite–diogenite".
These achondrites came from a differentiated parent body and experienced extensive igneous processing not much different from the mag ...
*
V-type asteroid A V-type asteroid or Vestoid is an asteroid whose spectral type is that of 4 Vesta. Approximately 6% of main-belt asteroids are vestoids, with Vesta being by far the largest of them. They are relatively bright, and rather similar to the more common ...
References
External links
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nyx
003908
Discoveries by Hans-Emil Schuster
Named minor planets
003908
003908
19800806
Nyx