307 Nike is a sizeable

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 ...

of the

asteroid 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 ...

. It was discovered by

Auguste Charlois Auguste Honoré Charlois (; November 26, 1864 – March 26, 1910) was a French astronomer who discovered 99 asteroids while working at the Nice Observatory in southeastern France. Asteroid discovery His first discovery was the asteroid 267 Tirz ...

on 5 March 1891 while working at the

Nice Observatory The Nice Observatory () is an astronomical observatory located in Nice, France on the summit of Mount Gros. The observatory was founded in 1879, by the banker Raphaël Bischoffsheim. The architect was Charles Garnier (architect), Charles Garnier, ...

. Charlois named it after the Greek goddess of victory, as well as the Greek name for the city where it was discovered. Measurement of the light curve of this asteroid in 2000 indicates a rotation period of 7.902 ± 0.005 hours. On 2 December 1972, ''

Pioneer 10 ''Pioneer 10'' (originally designated Pioneer F) is a NASA space probe launched in 1972 that completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter. ''Pioneer 10'' became the first of five artificial objects to achieve the escape velocity needed ...

'' made one of its nearest passages of an asteroid when it passed 307 Nike at a distance of about 8.8 million kilometers (0.059 AU) during the spacecraft's pioneering trip through the asteroid belt. No data was collected.

References

External links

* * 000307 Discoveries by Auguste Charlois Named minor planets 000307 18910305 Nike (mythology) {{Beltasteroid-stub