349 Dembowska is a large asteroid of the main belt, discovered on 9 December 1892, by the French astronomer
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 ...
while working at the observatory in
Nice
Nice ( ; ) is a city in and the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of nearly one millionHercules Dembowski, an Italian astronomer who made significant contributions to research on double and multiple stars.
Orbiting just inside the prominent 7:3 resonance with Jupiter, 349 Dembowska is among the largest asteroids in the main belt with an estimated diameter of ~140 km. It has a rotational period of 4.7012 hours, and is classified as an
R-type asteroid R-type asteroids are moderately bright, relatively uncommon inner-belt asteroids that are spectrally intermediate between the V and A-type asteroids. The spectrum shows distinct olivine and pyroxene features at 1 and 2 micrometres, with a possibil ...
for the presence of strong absorption lines in
olivine
The mineral olivine () is a magnesium iron Silicate minerals, silicate with the chemical formula . It is a type of Nesosilicates, nesosilicate or orthosilicate. The primary component of the Earth's upper mantle (Earth), upper mantle, it is a com ...
and
pyroxene
The pyroxenes (commonly abbreviated Px) are a group of important rock-forming inosilicate minerals found in many igneous and metamorphic rocks. Pyroxenes have the general formula , where X represents ions of calcium (Ca), sodium (Na), iron ( ...
with little or no metals. It may have undergone partial melting/ differentiation. 349 Dembowska has an unusually high
albedo
Albedo ( ; ) is the fraction of sunlight that is Diffuse reflection, diffusely reflected by a body. It is measured on a scale from 0 (corresponding to a black body that absorbs all incident radiation) to 1 (corresponding to a body that reflects ...
of 0.384. Of the asteroids with a diameter greater than 75 km, only
4 Vesta
Vesta (minor-planet designation: 4 Vesta) is one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, with a mean diameter of . It was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers on 29 March 1807 and is named after Vesta (mytho ...
has a higher known albedo.
Dembowska and
16 Psyche
16 Psyche ( ) is a large M-type asteroid, which was discovered by the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, on 17 March 1852 and named after the Greek goddess Psyche.
The prefix "16" signifies that it was the sixteenth minor plane ...
have orbits that repeat themselves almost exactly every five years in respect to their position to the Sun and Earth.
In 1988 a search for satellites or dust orbiting this asteroid was performed using the UH88 telescope at the
Mauna Kea Observatories
The Mauna Kea Observatories (MKO) are a group of independent astronomical research facilities and large telescope observatories that are located at the summit of Mauna Kea on Hawaii (island), Hawaiʻi, United States. The facilities are located i ...
, but the effort came up empty. There was one occultation on 31 October 2006, and on 5 December 2007.