1996 Adams, provisional designation , is a stony Eunomia asteroid from the middle region of the

asteroid belt The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, c ...

, approximately 13 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 16 October 1961, by the Indiana Asteroid Program at

Goethe Link Observatory The Goethe Link Observatory, observatory code 760, is an astronomical observatory near Brooklyn, Indiana, United States. It is owned by Indiana University and operated by the Indiana Astronomical Society https://iasindy.org/about.html, which eff ...

near Brooklyn, Indiana, United States. It was later named after mathematician

John Couch Adams John Couch Adams (; 5 June 1819 – 21 January 1892) was a British mathematician and astronomer. He was born in Laneast, near Launceston, Cornwall, and died in Cambridge. His most famous achievement was predicting the existence and position o ...

Classification and orbit

The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link (CALL) classifies ''Adams'' as a member of the

Eunomia family The Eunomia or Eunomian family () is a large asteroid family of S-type asteroids named after the asteroid 15 Eunomia. It is the most prominent family in the intermediate asteroid belt and the 6th-largest family with nearly six thousand known member ...

, a large group of stony

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 secon ...

and the most prominent family in the intermediate main-belt. However, based on its concurring orbital elements, Alvarez-Candal from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, groups the asteroid into the Maria family, which is named after

170 Maria Maria (minor planet designation: 170 Maria) is a Asteroid belt, Main belt asteroid that was discovered by French astronomer Henri Joseph Perrotin on January 10, 1877. Its orbit was computed by Antonio Abetti, and the asteroid was named after his ...

''(also see

9175 Graun 9175 Graun, provisional designation , is a stony Eunomian asteroid from the central region of the asteroid belt, approximately 10 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 29 July 1990, by American astronomer Henry E. Holt at Palomar Observat ...

)''. ''Adams'' orbits the Sun in the central main-belt at a distance of 2.2–2.9 AU once every 4 years and 1 month (1,495 days). Its orbit has an

eccentricity Eccentricity or eccentric may refer to: * Eccentricity (behavior), odd behavior on the part of a person, as opposed to being "normal" Mathematics, science and technology Mathematics * Off-Centre (geometry), center, in geometry * Eccentricity (g ...

of 0.14 and an

inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object. For a satellite orbiting the Eart ...

of 15 ° with respect to the

ecliptic The ecliptic or ecliptic plane is the orbital plane of the Earth around the Sun. From the perspective of an observer on Earth, the Sun's movement around the celestial sphere over the course of a year traces out a path along the ecliptic agains ...

. ''Adams'' was first identified as at

Johannesburg Observatory Union Observatory also known as Johannesburg Observatory ( 078) is a defunct astronomical observatory in Johannesburg, South Africa that was operated between 1903 and 1971. It is located on Observatory Ridge, the city's highest point at 1,808 met ...

. It first used observation was a precovery made at the discovering observatory just ten days prior to the official discovery observation.

Physical characteristics

Several rotational

lightcurve In astronomy, a light curve is a graph of light intensity of a celestial object or region as a function of time, typically with the magnitude of light received on the y axis and with time on the x axis. The light is usually in a particular freq ...

s of ''Adams'' were obtained from photometric observations in 2010 and 2012. Best-rated lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of hours with a brightness variation between 0.40 and 0.46

magnitude Magnitude may refer to: Mathematics *Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction *Magnitude (mathematics), the relative size of an object *Norm (mathematics), a term for the size or length of a vector *Order of ...

(). Additional photometric observations gave similar periods of 3.316, 3.27 and 3.560 hours with an amplitude of 0.60, 0.28 and 0.34, respectively (). According to the surveys carried out by the Japanese

Akari Akari (ASTRO-F) was an infrared astronomy satellite developed by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, in cooperation with institutes of Europe and Korea. It was launched on 21 February 2006, at 21:28 UTC (06:28, 22 February JST) by M-V rocke ...

satellite and NASA's

Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE, observatory code C51, Explorer 92 and SMEX-6) is a NASA infrared astronomy space telescope in the Explorers Program. It was launched in December 2009, and placed in hibernation mode in February 201 ...

with its subsequent

NEOWISE Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE, observatory code C51, Explorer 92 and SMEX-6) is a NASA infrared astronomy space telescope in the Explorers Program. It was launched in December 2009, and placed in hibernation mode in February 201 ...

mission, ''Adams'' measures between 10.1 and 13.5 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an

albedo Albedo (; ) is the measure of the diffuse reflection of solar radiation out of the total solar radiation and measured on a scale from 0, corresponding to a black body that absorbs all incident radiation, to 1, corresponding to a body that refl ...

between 0.141 and 0.395. The ''Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link'' assumes an albedo of 0.21 – derived from

15 Eunomia Eunomia (minor planet designation 15 Eunomia) is a very large asteroid in the inner asteroid belt. It is the largest of the stony ( S-type) asteroids, with 3 Juno as a close second. It is quite a massive asteroid, in 6th to 8th place (to within ...

, the family's largest member and namesake – and calculates a diameter of 13.9 kilometers with an

absolute magnitude Absolute magnitude () is a measure of the luminosity of a celestial object on an inverse logarithmic astronomical magnitude scale. An object's absolute magnitude is defined to be equal to the apparent magnitude that the object would have if it ...

of 11.6.

Naming

This

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 ...

was named after

(1819–1892), British mathematician and astronomer, who predicted the existence and position of Neptune, simultaneously with French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier, ''(also see 1997 Leverrier)''. The lunar crater '' Adams'' is also named in his honour. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center on 15 October 1977 ().

Notes

References

External links

Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB)
query form

)
Dictionary of Minor Planet Names
Google books

– Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend

– Minor Planet Center * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Adams 001996 001996 001996 Named minor planets 19611016