268 Adorea is a very large
main belt asteroid, about in width.
It was discovered by
A. Borrelly on 8 June 1887 in
Marseilles
Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...
. This asteroid is a member of the
Themis family The Themis family (''adj. Themistian''; ) is a Asteroid family, family of carbonaceous asteroids located in the Kirkwood gap, outer portion of the asteroid belt, at a mean distance of 3.13 Astronomical Unit, AU from the Sun. It is one of the Asteroi ...
[ and is classified as a primitive ]carbonaceous
Carbon () is a chemical element with the chemical symbol, symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalence, tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent bond, covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to gro ...
F-type/ C-type asteroid. It is orbiting the Sun at a distance of with an orbital eccentricity
In astrodynamics, the orbital eccentricity of an astronomical object is a dimensionless parameter that determines the amount by which its orbit around another body deviates from a perfect circle. A value of 0 is a circular orbit, values betwee ...
(ovalness) of 0.14 and a period of . The orbital plane is tilted at an angle of 2.44° to the plane of the ecliptic.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 with a brightness variation of in magnitude. This result is consistent with some, but not all previous results. Some studies had suggested a longer rotation period of ; double the time measured. However, the new data is inconsistent with the longer period.[
In May 1979, 268 Adorea was positioned in proximity of the galaxy ]NGC 4517
NGC 4517 is a spiral galaxy located approximately 40 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. It was discovered in 1784 by William Herschel. It is a member of the Virgo II Groups, a series of galaxies and galaxy clusters strun ...
and as a bright new light source it was identified as a potential supernova
A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when ...
. However, the light was missing from a second photographic plate taken ten days later, and the source was soon identified as the asteroid.[
The name refers to ''adorea liba'', the ]Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
name for spelt
Spelt (''Triticum spelta''), also known as dinkel wheat or hulled wheat, is a species of wheat that has been cultivated since approximately 5000 BC.
Spelt was an important staple food in parts of Europe from the Bronze Age to medieval times. No ...
cakes produced from meal and salt offered by the Romans as a sacrifice; the name was controversial among astronomers, as all previous asteroids had been named for humans or mythological figures.
References
External links
The Asteroid Orbital Elements Database
Asteroid Lightcurve Data File
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Adorea
000268
Discoveries by Alphonse Borrelly
Named minor planets
000268
18870608