886 Washingtonia is a

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 ...

orbiting the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

. It was discovered on 16 November 1917, from

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

and is named after the 1st

President of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...

Discovery circumstances

Credit for the discovery of 886 Washingtonia has been given to George Peters of the

US Naval Observatory United States Naval Observatory (USNO) is a scientific and military facility that produces geopositioning, navigation and timekeeping data for the United States Navy and the United States Department of Defense. Established in 1830 as the Depo ...

, who was the first to report it. The object was, however, observed four days earlier by

Margaret Harwood Margaret Harwood (March 19, 1885 February 6, 1979) was an American astronomer specializing in photometry and the first director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory in Nantucket, Massachusetts. An asteroid discovered in 1960 was named 7040 Harw ...

, who was advised not to report it as a new discovery because "it was inappropriate that a woman should be thrust into the limelight with such a claim". The first woman to be credited with the discovery of a minor planet was Pelageya Fedorovna Shajn, eleven years later.

References

External links

Lightcurve plot of 886 Washingtonia
Palmer Divide Observatory, B. D. Warner (2003)
Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB)
query form

)
Dictionary of Minor Planet Names
Google books

– Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend

– Minor Planet Center * * 000886 Discoveries by George Peters Named minor planets 000886 19171116 {{beltasteroid-stub