204 Kallisto is a fairly typical, although sizeable

Main belt The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, centered on the Sun and roughly spanning the space between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids ...

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 ...

. It is classified as an

S-type asteroid S-type (stony-type or silicaceous-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 ...

. Like other asteroids of its type, it is light in colour. It was discovered by

Johann Palisa Johann Palisa (6 December 1848 – 2 May 1925) was an Austrian astronomer, born in Troppau, Austrian Silesia, now Czech Republic. He was a prolific discoverer of asteroids, discovering 122 in all, from 136 Austria in 1874 to 1073 G ...

on 8 October 1879, in Pola, and was named after the same nymph

Callisto CALLISTO (''Cooperative Action Leading to Launcher Innovation in Stage Toss-back Operations'') is a reusable VTVL Prototype, demonstrator propelled by a small 40 kN Japanese LOX-LH2 rocket engine. It is being developed jointly by the CNES, French ...

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 ...

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...

moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

. Photometric measurements during 2009 produced a

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 ...

that indicated a sidereal

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 with a variation

amplitude The amplitude of a periodic variable is a measure of its change in a single period (such as time or spatial period). The amplitude of a non-periodic signal is its magnitude compared with a reference value. There are various definitions of am ...

of magnitudes. This result conflicted with previous determinations of the period, so the latter were ruled out.

References

External links

The Asteroid Orbital Elements Database

* * 000204 Discoveries by Johann Palisa Named minor planets 000204 18791008 Callisto (mythology) {{S-beltasteroid-stub