1042 Amazone, provisional designation , is a dark

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. ...

and slow rotator in the outer

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 ...

, approximately 70 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 22 April 1925, by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth at Heidelberg Observatory in southern Germany. It is named after the

Amazons In Greek mythology, the Amazons ( Ancient Greek: Ἀμαζόνες ''Amazónes'', singular Ἀμαζών ''Amazōn'', via Latin ''Amāzon, -ŏnis'') are portrayed in a number of ancient epic poems and legends, such as the Labours of Hercules ...

from Greek mythology.

Orbit and classification

''Amazone'' orbits the Sun in the outer main-belt at a distance of 3.0–3.5 AU once every 5 years and 10 months (2,131 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.09 and an

inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object. For a satellite orbiting the Earth ...

of 21 ° with respect to the ecliptic. The body's observation arc begins three weeks after its official discovery observation.

Physical characteristics

The

carbonaceous Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon makes up o ...

asteroid has been characterized as a dark and reddish P-type asteroid by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), and as an

X-type asteroid The X-group of asteroids collects together several types with similar spectra, but probably quite different compositions. Tholen classification In the Tholen classification the X-group consists of the following types: * E-type – with high a ...

by Pan-STARRS photometric survey.

Diameter and albedo

According to the surveys carried out by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite

IRAS The Infrared Astronomical Satellite ( Dutch: ''Infrarood Astronomische Satelliet'') (IRAS) was the first space telescope to perform a survey of the entire night sky at infrared wavelengths. Launched on 25 January 1983, its mission lasted ten ...

, the Japanese

Akari Akari (ASTRO-F) was an infrared astronomy satellite developed by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, in cooperation with institutes of Europe and Korea. It was launched on 21 February 2006, at 21:28 UTC (06:28, 22 February JST) by M-V rocket ...

satellite, and the NEOWISE mission of NASA's WISE space-telescope, ''Amazone'' measures between 63.9 and 73.6 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an

albedo Albedo (; ) is the measure of the diffuse reflection of sunlight, solar radiation out of the total solar radiation and measured on a scale from 0, corresponding to a black body that absorbs all incident radiation, to 1, corresponding to a body ...

of 0.039 to 0.054. The ''Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link'' derives an albedo of 0.036 and a diameter of 73.6 kilometers.

Slow rotator

In April 2005, astronomer Brian Warner obtained two divergent rotational lightcurves for ''Amazone''. The longer solution gave a long

rotation period The rotation period of a celestial object (e.g., star, gas giant, planet, moon, asteroid) may refer to its sidereal rotation period, i.e. the time that the object takes to complete a single revolution around its axis of rotation relative to the ...

of 540 hours with a brightness variation of 0.25

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 astronomer assumes the full lightcurve to be bimodal, having two maximums and minimums per rotation.

Naming

Based on a proposal by Gustav Stracke, the asteroid was named after the

, a race of woman warriors in Greek mythology. They had no men and joined with their neighbors, killed the sons and educated the daughters of whom the teats were burnt so that they could discharge the arrows more rapidly. The asteroids

271 Penthesilea Penthesilea (minor planet designation: 271 Penthesilea) is a mid-sized main belt asteroid that was discovered by Viktor Knorre on 13 October 1887 in Berlin. It was his last asteroid discovery. The asteroid was named after Penthesilea, the mythi ...

and

10295 Hippolyta 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...

were named after queens of the Amazons, while

5143 Heracles 5143 Heracles, provisional designation , is a highly eccentric, rare-type asteroid and synchronous binary system, classified as near-Earth object of the Apollo group, approximately 4.8 kilometers in diameter. The asteroid was discovered on 7 Nov ...

was named after the hero who fought them.

Notes

References

External links

Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB)
query form

)
Dictionary of Minor Planet Names
Google books

– Observatoire de Genève, Raoul Behrend

– Minor Planet Center * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Amazone 001042 Discoveries by Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth Named minor planets 001042 19250422 Amazons (Greek mythology)