129 Antigone is a large main-belt

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the Solar System#Inner Solar System, inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter (Trojan asteroids). As ...

. Radar observations indicate that it is composed of almost pure

nickel Nickel is a chemical element; it has symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive, but large pieces are slo ...

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

. It and other similar asteroids probably originate from the core of a shattered Vesta-like

planetesimal Planetesimals () are solid objects thought to exist in protoplanetary disks and debris disks. Believed to have formed in the Solar System about 4.6 billion years ago, they aid study of its formation. Formation A widely accepted theory of pla ...

which had a differentiated interior. It was discovered by German-American astronomer C. H. F. Peters on February 5, 1873, and named after

Antigone ANTIGONE (Algorithms for coNTinuous / Integer Global Optimization of Nonlinear Equations), is a deterministic global optimization solver for general Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programs (MINLP). History ANTIGONE is an evolution of GloMIQO, a global ...

, the Theban princess in

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

. In 1979 a possible

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

of Antigone was suggested based on

lightcurve In astronomy, a light curve is a graph (discrete mathematics), graph of the Radiance, light intensity of a celestial object or region as a function of time, typically with the magnitude (astronomy), magnitude of light received on the ''y''-axis ...

data. A model constructed from these shows Antigone itself to be quite regularly shaped. In 1990, the asteroid was observed from the

Collurania-Teramo Observatory The Collurania Observatory, also Teramo Observatory, (, is an astronomy, astronomical observatory located in Teramo, in Abruzzo region of central Italy. It was founded by Vincenzo Cerulli in 1890, who was later honoured by having it bear his na ...

, allowing a composite light curve to be produced that showed a

rotation period In astronomy, the rotation period or spin period of a celestial object (e.g., star, planet, moon, asteroid) has two definitions. The first one corresponds to the '' sidereal rotation period'' (or ''sidereal day''), i.e., the time that the objec ...

of 4.9572 ± 0.0001 hours and a brightness variation of 0.34 ± 0.01 in

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 ...

. The ratio of the lengths of the major to minor axes for this asteroid were found to be 1.45 ±0.02. 10 μ radiometric data collected from

Kitt Peak Kitt Peak () is a mountain in the U.S. state of Arizona, and at is the highest point in the Quinlan Mountains. It is the location of the Kitt Peak National Observatory. The radio telescope at the observatory is one of ten dishes comprising the ...

in 1975 gave a diameter estimate of 114 km. Since 1985, a total of three stellar

occultation An occultation is an event that occurs when one object is hidden from the observer by another object that passes between them. The term is often used in astronomy, but can also refer to any situation in which an object in the foreground blocks f ...

s by Antigone have been observed. A favorable occultation of a star on April 11, 1985, was observed from sites near

Pueblo, Colorado Pueblo ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule municipality that is the county seat of and the List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous municipality in Pueblo County, Colorado, United States. The ...

, allowing a diameter estimate of 113.0 ± 4.2 km to be calculated.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Antigone 000129 000129 000129 Discoveries by Christian Peters Named minor planets 000129 18730205