677 Aaltje is a main-belt

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 ''minor ...

orbiting the Sun, discovered by August Kopff at Heidelberg on January 18, 1909. It was named after the Dutch singer Aaltje Noordewier-Reddingius. This object has a geometric albedo of 0.2794. Photometric observations during 2008 showed a

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 16.6076 ± 0.0006 hours and a brightness variation of 0.30 ± 0.02 in magnitude. 677 Aaltje is orbiting within the 7/3

Kirkwood gap A Kirkwood gap is a gap or dip in the distribution of the semi-major axes (or equivalently of the orbital periods) of the orbits of main-belt asteroids. They correspond to the locations of orbital resonances with Jupiter. For example, there ar ...

. This means it has a 7:3 orbital resonance with

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...

, completing seven orbits for every three orbits of the planet. For smaller objects, this would typically lead to orbital instability, causing it to shift to a different orbital period. However, 677 Aaltje is too large for its orbit to have been moved by more than about 0.01 AU over the lifetime of the

Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar S ...

. What is more likely is that orbital interactions with the dwarf planet

Ceres Ceres most commonly refers to: * Ceres (dwarf planet), the largest asteroid * Ceres (mythology), the Roman goddess of agriculture Ceres may also refer to: Places Brazil * Ceres, Goiás, Brazil * Ceres Microregion, in north-central Goiás st ...

may have shifted it to the present-day orbit—the orbit of 677 Aaltje leads it into relatively close encounters with Ceres.

References

External links

Discovery Circumstances: Numbered Minor Planets (1)-(5000)
– Minor Planet Center * * 000677 Discoveries by August Kopff Named minor planets 000677 19090118 {{Beltasteroid-stub