650 Amalasuntha 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 ...

that was discovered by German astronomer

August Kopff August Kopff (February 5, 1882 – April 25, 1960) was a German astronomer and discoverer of several comets and asteroids. Kopff studied and worked in Heidelberg, getting his PhD there in 1906 and he then joined the Humboldt University of Berli ...

on October 4, 1907, at

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

. It was named after

Amalasuntha Amalasuintha (495 – 30 April 534/535) was a ruler of Ostrogothic Kingdom from 526 to 535. She ruled first as regent for her son and thereafter as queen on throne. A regent is "a person who governs a kingdom in the minority, absence, or disabili ...

, the queen of the

Ostrogoths The Ostrogoths ( la, Ostrogothi, Austrogothi) were a Roman-era Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the large Gothic populations who ...

from 526 to 534 AD. The name may have been inspired by the asteroid's provisional designation ''1907 AM''. Photometric observations of this asteroid during 2007 at the Organ Mesa Observatory in

Las Cruces, New Mexico Las Cruces (; "the crosses") is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New Mexico and the seat of Doña Ana County. As of the 2020 census the population was 111,385. Las Cruces is the largest city in both Doña Ana County and southern Ne ...

, were used to create a

light curve 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 frequ ...

plot. This showed a rotation period of 16.582 ± 0.001 hours and a brightness variation of 0.44 ± 0.03

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 ...

during each cycle.

References

External links

* * Nysa asteroids

Unclassifiable asteroids (Tholen) 19071004 {{beltasteroid-stub