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5 Astraea
Large asteroid From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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5 Astraea (/æˈstriːə/) is an asteroid in the asteroid belt. This object is orbiting the Sun at a distance of 385 million kilometres (2.5735 AU) with a period of 4.13 yr and an orbital eccentricity of 0.19. The orbital plane is inclined at an angle of 5.37° to the plane of the ecliptic. It is spinning with a period of 16.8 h. The surface of Astraea is highly reflective and its composition is probably a mixture of nickel–iron with silicates of magnesium and iron. It is an S-type asteroid in the Tholen classification system.[4]
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Discovery and name
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Astraea was the fifth asteroid discovered, on 8 December 1845, by Karl Ludwig Hencke and named for Astraea, a Greek goddess of justice named after the stars. It was his first of two asteroid discoveries. The second was 6 Hebe. A German amateur astronomer and post office headmaster, Hencke was looking for 4 Vesta when he stumbled on Astraea. The King of Prussia awarded him an annual pension of 1200 marks for the discovery.[10]
Hencke's symbol for Astraea is an inverted anchor, in the pipeline for Unicode 17.0 as U+1F778 (.svg){kind=small}
),[11][12] though given Astraea's role with justice and precision, it is perhaps a stylized set of scales, or a typographic substitute for one.[13][14]
This symbol is no longer used. The astrological symbol is a percent sign, encoded specifically at U+2BD9 ⯙:[15] it is simply shift-5 on the keyboard, because Astraea was the fifth asteroid discovered.[11] The modern astronomical symbol is a simple encircled 5 (⑤).
For 38 years after the discovery of the fourth known asteroid, Vesta, in 1807, no further asteroids were discovered.[16] After the discovery of Astraea, 8 more were discovered in the following 5 years, and 24 were found in the 5 years after that. The discovery of Astraea proved to be the starting point for the eventual demotion of the four original asteroids (which were regarded as planets at the time)[16] to their current status, as it became apparent that these four were only the largest of a new type of celestial body with thousands of members.
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Characteristics
Photometry indicates prograde rotation, that the north pole points in the direction of right ascension 115° or 310° and declination 55°, with a 5° uncertainty.[7] This gives an axial tilt of about 33°.[citation needed] With an apparent magnitude of 8.7 (on a favorable opposition on 15 February 2016), it is only the seventeenth-brightest main-belt asteroid, and fainter than, for example, 192 Nausikaa or even 324 Bamberga (at rare near-perihelion oppositions).
An stellar occultation on 6 June 2008 allowed Astraea's diameter to be estimated; it was found to be 115 ± 6 km.[17]
Left: A size comparison of the first 10 numbered asteroids profiled against Earth's Moon.
Right: The orbit of 5 Astraea in white compared with those of Earth, Mars and Jupiter.
Right: The orbit of 5 Astraea in white compared with those of Earth, Mars and Jupiter.
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Notes
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External links
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