259 Aletheia is a very large

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 ...

that was discovered by German–American astronomer Christian Peters on June 28, 1886, at Litchfield Observatory, Clinton, New York. The dark and heterogeneously composed X-type (Tholen: C P-type) asteroid contains primitive

carbonaceous Carbonaceous refers to something relating to, containing, or composed of carbon. It is a descriptor used for the attribute of any substance rich in carbon. Particularly, ''carbonaceous hydrocarbons'' are very unsaturated, high- molecular-weight h ...

materials, responsible for its low albedo of 0.04. Aletheia measures about 185 kilometers in diameter and belongs to the

largest asteroids The following is a collection of lists of asteroids of the Solar System that are exceptional in some way, such as their size or orbit. For the purposes of this article, "asteroid" refers to minor planets out to the orbit of Neptune, and includes ...

of the main-belt. It has a semi-major axis of 3.1 AU and an orbit inclined by 11 degrees with a period of 5.55 years.

Richard P. Binzel Richard "Rick" P. Binzel (born 1958) is an American astronomer and professor of planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is a discoverer of minor planets, photometrist and the inventor of the Torino Scale, a metho ...

and

Schelte Bus Schelte John "Bobby" Bus (born 1956) is an American astronomer and discoverer of minor planets at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaiʻi and deputy director of NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) at the Mauna Kea Obser ...

further added to the knowledge about this asteroid in a lightwave survey published in 2003. This project was known as Small Main-belt Asteroid Spectroscopic Survey, Phase II or SMASSII, which built on a previous survey of the main-belt asteroids. The visible-wavelength (0.435-0.925 micrometre) spectra data was gathered between August 1993 and March 1999. Lightcurve data has also been recorded by observers at the Antelope Hill Observatory, which has been designated as an official observatory by the

Minor Planet Center The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the official body for observing and reporting on minor planets under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Founded in 1947, it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Funct ...

. It is named after the Greek goddess of truth,

Aletheia ''Aletheia'' or Alethia (; ) is truth or disclosure in philosophy. Originating in Ancient Greek philosophy, the term was explicitly used for the first time in the history of philosophy by Parmenides in his poem ''Parmenides#On Nature, On Nature ...

, the daughter of Zeus and one of the nurses of Apollo.

References

External links

Lightcurve plot of (259) Aletheia
, Antelope Hills Observatory

Asteroid Lightcurve Data File
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:000259 000259

CP-type asteroids (Tholen) X-type asteroids (SMASS) 18860628