858 El Djezaïr is a stony
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
asteroid belt, about 24 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on May 26, 1916, by French astronomer
Frédéric Sy
Frédéric Sy was a French astronomer and a discoverer of minor planets.
He worked at the Paris Observatory from 1879 to 1887, and as the assistant astronomer at the Algiers Observatory, North Africa, from 1887 to 1918. While working in Algier ...
at the
Algiers Observatory in Algeria, North Africa, and given the provisional designation 1916 a.
The asteroid orbits the Sun at a distance of 2.5–3.1
AU once every 4.71 years (1,722 days). The 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 second ...
has a very high geometric albedo of 0.32. Its rotation period has been measured to take 22 hours and 20 minutes.
Along with the asteroids
68 Leto and
236 Honoria, it is a member of the
Leto family, a small, well-defined group of asteroids, all with a semi-major axis of close to 2.8 AU.
El Djezaïr is the French spelling of the Arabic name for
Algiers
Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques ...
, the capital of Algeria. It means "the islands". The asteroid was the first minor planet to receive a name that consists of more than one word.
Its designation, 1916 a, is a superseded version of the modern two-letter code
system of provisional designation, implemented just a few years later in 1925.
References
External links
Lightcurve plot of 858 El Djezair Palmer Divide Observatory,
B. D. Warner (2005)
Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB) query form
)
Dictionary of Minor Planet Names Google books
– Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend
– Minor Planet Center
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000858
Discoveries by Frédéric Sy
Named minor planets
000858
19160526
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