114 Kassandra is a large and dark main-belt

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 ...

. It belongs to the rare class T. It was discovered by C. H. F. Peters on July 23, 1871, and is named after

Cassandra Cassandra or Kassandra (; , , sometimes referred to as Alexandra; ) in Greek mythology was a Trojan priestess dedicated to the god Apollo and fated by him to utter true prophecy, prophecies but never to be believed. In modern usage her name is e ...

, the prophetess in the tales of the

Trojan War The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the twelfth or thirteenth century BC. The war was waged by the Achaeans (Homer), Achaeans (Ancient Greece, Greeks) against the city of Troy after Paris (mytho ...

. This object is classified as a rare T-type asteroid, with parts of the spectrum displaying properties similar to the mineral troilite and to carbonaceous chondrite. The shape of the spectrum also appears similar to fine grain from the Ornans meteorite, which landed in France in 1868. The

light curve In astronomy, a light curve is a graph (discrete mathematics), graph of the Radiance, light intensity of a celestial object or region as a function of time, typically with the magnitude (astronomy), magnitude of light received on the ''y''-axis ...

for this asteroid displays a period of 10.758 ± 0.004 hours with a brightness variation of 0.25 ± 0.01 in magnitude. In 2001, 114 Kassandra was observed by radar from the

Arecibo Observatory The Arecibo Observatory, also known as the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC) and formerly known as the Arecibo Ionosphere Observatory, is an observatory in Barrio Esperanza, Arecibo, Puerto Rico owned by the US National Science F ...

. The return signal matched an effective diameter of 100 ± 14 km. This is consistent with the asteroid dimensions computed through other means.

In popular media

The 2009 miniseries ''

Meteor A meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star, is a glowing streak of a small body (usually meteoroid) going through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a ...

'' featured 114 Kassandra being sent on a collision course with Earth due to a

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that warms and begins to release gases when passing close to the Sun, a process called outgassing. This produces an extended, gravitationally unbound atmosphere or Coma (cometary), coma surrounding ...

impact and the effort by scientists to stop it.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kassandra 000114 Discoveries by Christian Peters Named minor planets 000114 000114 18710723 Cassandra