Aquitania ( minor planet designation: 387 Aquitainia), provisional designation , is a Postremian asteroid from the central regions of the

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, c ...

, approximately 101 kilometers in diameter. Discovered by Fernand Courty at the Bordeaux Observatory in 1894, it was named for the French region of

Aquitaine Aquitaine ( , , ; oc, Aquitània ; eu, Akitania; Poitevin-Saintongeais: ''Aguiéne''), archaic Guyenne or Guienne ( oc, Guiana), is a historical region of southwestern France and a former administrative region of the country. Since 1 Janu ...

, the former province of Gallia Aquitania in the ancient Roman Empire.

Discovery

''Aquitania'' was discovered by French astronomer Fernand Courty at the Bordeaux Observatory on 5 March 1894. It was second of his two asteroid discoveries. The first was

384 Burdigala Burdigala (minor planet designation: 384 Burdigala) is a typical Main belt asteroid. It was discovered by F. Courty on 11 February 1894 in Bordeaux. It was the first of his two asteroid discoveries. The other was 387 Aquitania. Burdigala is the ...

Classification and orbit

''Aquitania'' is the largest member of the Postrema family (), a mid-sized central asteroid family of little more than 100 members. It orbits the Sun in the central main-belt at a distance of 2.1–3.4 AU once every 4 years and 6 months (1,657 days). Its orbit has an

eccentricity Eccentricity or eccentric may refer to: * Eccentricity (behavior), odd behavior on the part of a person, as opposed to being "normal" Mathematics, science and technology Mathematics * Off-Centre (geometry), center, in geometry * Eccentricity (g ...

of 0.24 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 Eart ...

of 18 ° with respect to the

ecliptic The ecliptic or ecliptic plane is the orbital plane of the Earth around the Sun. From the perspective of an observer on Earth, the Sun's movement around the celestial sphere over the course of a year traces out a path along the ecliptic agains ...

Physical characteristics

In the

Tholen Tholen () is a 25,000 people municipality in the southwest of the Netherlands. The municipality of Tholen takes its name from the town of Tholen, which is the largest population center in the municipality. The municipality consists of two peninsu ...

and

SMASS classification An asteroid spectral type is assigned to asteroids based on their emission spectrum, color, and sometimes albedo. These types are thought to correspond to an asteroid's surface composition. For small bodies that are not internally differentiat ...

, ''Aquitania'' is an S-type and

L-type asteroid L-type asteroids are relatively uncommon asteroids with a strongly reddish spectrum shortwards of 0.75 μm, and a featureless flat spectrum longwards of this. In comparison with the K-type, they exhibit a more reddish spectrum at visible wavele ...

, respectively. Several rotational

lightcurve In astronomy, a light curve is a graph of light intensity of a celestial object or region as a function of time, typically with the magnitude of light received on the y axis and with time on the x axis. The light is usually in a particular freq ...

s of ''Aquitania'' have been obtained from photometric observations since the 1980s. Lightcurve analysis gave a consolidated rotation period of 24.144 hours with a brightness variation between 0.09 and 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 ...

(). 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 mo ...

, the Japanese Akari satellite and the

NEOWISE Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE, observatory code C51, Explorer 92 and SMEX-6) is a NASA infrared astronomy space telescope in the Explorers Program. It was launched in December 2009, and placed in hibernation mode in February 201 ...

mission of NASA's

Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE, observatory code C51, Explorer 92 and SMEX-6) is a NASA infrared astronomy space telescope in the Explorers Program. It was launched in December 2009, and placed in hibernation mode in February 201 ...

, ''Aquitania'' measures between 97.33 and 105.06 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an

albedo Albedo (; ) is the measure of the diffuse reflection of 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 that refl ...

between 0.174 and 0.203. The ''Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link'' adopts the results obtained by IRAS, that is an albedo of 0.19 and a diameter of 100.51 kilometers based on an

absolute magnitude Absolute magnitude () is a measure of the luminosity of a celestial object on an inverse logarithmic astronomical magnitude scale. An object's absolute magnitude is defined to be equal to the apparent magnitude that the object would have if it ...

of 7.44.

Naming

This

minor planet According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term ''mino ...

was named for the Latin name of the French region of

. Under Caesar the Roman region of Gallia Aquitania consisted of the country between the Pyrenees mountains and Garonne river. The region was later expanded to the Loire and Allier rivers under Augustus. The official naming citation was mentioned in ''

The Names of the Minor Planets Paul Herget (January 30, 1908 – August 27, 1981) was an American astronomer and director of the Cincinnati Observatory, who established the Minor Planet Center after World War II. Career Herget taught astronomy at the University of Cincinna ...

'' by

Paul Herget Paul Herget (January 30, 1908 – August 27, 1981) was an American astronomer and director of the Cincinnati Observatory, who established the Minor Planet Center after World War II. Career Herget taught astronomy at the University of Cincinn ...

in 1955 ().

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:Aquitania 000387 Discoveries by Fernand Courty Named minor planets 000387 000387 18940305