3551 Verenia, provisional designation , is an
Amor asteroid
The Amor asteroids are a group of near-Earth asteroids named after the archetype object 1221 Amor . The orbital perihelion of these objects is close to, but greater than, the orbital aphelion of Earth (i.e., the objects do not cross Earth's orbi ...
and a
Mars crosser discovered on 12 September 1983 by
R. Scott Dunbar. Although Verenia passed within 40 Gm of the Earth in the 20th century, it will never do so in the 21st. In 2028 it will come within 0.025
AU of
Ceres.
3551 Verenia was named for the first vestal virgin consecrated by the legendary Roman king
Numa Pompilius
Numa Pompilius (; 753–672 BC; reigned 715–672 BC) was the legendary second king of Rome, succeeding Romulus after a one-year interregnum. He was of Sabine origin, and many of Rome's most important religious and political institutions ar ...
.
See also
*
V-type asteroid A V-type asteroid or Vestoid is an asteroid whose spectral type is that of 4 Vesta. Approximately 6% of main-belt asteroids are vestoids, with Vesta being by far the largest of them. They are relatively bright, and rather similar to the more common ...
*
HED meteorite
HED meteorites are a clan (subgroup) of achondrite meteorites. HED stands for "howardite– eucrite– diogenite".
These achondrites came from a differentiated parent body and experienced extensive igneous processing not much different from the ma ...
*
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, t ...
*
4055 Magellan
4055 Magellan, provisional designation , is a bright and eccentric asteroid and near-Earth object of the Amor asteroid, Amor group, approximately 2.5 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 24 February 1985, by American astronomer Eleanor He ...
*
3908 Nyx
3908 Nyx is an Amor and Mars-crosser asteroid. It was discovered by Hans-Emil Schuster on August 6, 1980, and is named after Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night, after which Pluto's moon Nix is also named. It is 1–2 km in diameter and ...
References
External links
Catchall Catalog of Minor PlanetsNeoDys *
*
*
003551
Discoveries by R. Scott Dunbar
Named minor planets
003551
19830912
{{NE-asteroid-stub