Nike (

minor planet designation A formal minor-planet designation is, in its final form, a number–name combination given to a minor planet (asteroid, centaur, trans-Neptunian object and dwarf planet but not comet). Such designation always features a leading number (catalog or ...

: 307 Nike) is a sizeable

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. ...

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, called ...

. It was discovered by

Auguste Charlois Auguste Honoré Charlois (November 26, 1864 – March 26, 1910) was a French astronomer who discovered 99 asteroids while working at the Nice Observatory in southeastern France. Asteroid Discovery His first discovery was the asteroid 267 Tirz ...

on 5 March 1891 while working at the

Nice Observatory The Nice Observatory (french: Observatoire de Nice) is an astronomical observatory located in Nice, France on the summit of Mount Gros. The observatory was founded in 1879, by the banker Raphaël Bischoffsheim. The architect was Charles Garnier, ...

. Charlois named it after the Greek goddess of victory, as well as the Greek name for the city where it was discovered. Measurement of the light curve of this asteroid in 2000 indicates a rotation period of 7.902 ± 0.005 hours. On 2 December 1972, ''

Pioneer 10 ''Pioneer 10'' (originally designated Pioneer F) is an American space probe, launched in 1972 and weighing , that completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter. Thereafter, ''Pioneer 10'' became the first of five artificial objects to ach ...

'' made one of its nearest passages of an asteroid when it passed 307 Nike at a distance of about 8.8 million kilometers (0.059 AU) during the spacecraft's pioneering trip through the asteroid belt. No data was collected.

References

External links

* * 000307 Discoveries by Auguste Charlois Named minor planets 000307 18910305 {{Beltasteroid-stub