1332 Marconia, provisional designation , is a dark
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 ...
and the parent body of the
Marconia family
An asteroid family is a population of asteroids that share similar proper orbital elements, such as semimajor axis, eccentricity (orbit), eccentricity, and orbital inclination. The members of the families are thought to be Collisional family, fra ...
located in the outer regions 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 measures approximately in diameter. The asteroid was discovered on 9 January 1934, by Italian astronomer
Luigi Volta
This is a list of minor-planet discoverers credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of one or several minor planets (such as near-Earth and main-belt asteroids, Jupiter trojans and distant objects). , the discovery of 612,011 num ...
at the
Observatory of Turin
The Observatory of Turin (, also known as Pino Torinese; List of observatory codes, obs. code: IAU code#022, 022) is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics (, INAF). It is located on the top o ...
in Pino Torinese, northern Italy. It was named for Italian electrical engineer
Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquess of Marconi ( ; ; 25 April 1874 – 20 July 1937) was an Italian electrical engineer, inventor, and politician known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based Wireless telegraphy, wireless tel ...
. The uncommon
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 wavelen ...
has a
rotation period
In astronomy, the rotation period or spin period of a celestial object (e.g., star, planet, moon, asteroid) has two definitions. The first one corresponds to the '' sidereal rotation period'' (or ''sidereal day''), i.e., the time that the objec ...
of 19.2 hours.
Orbit and classification
''Marconia'' is the
parent body
A parent body in meteoritics is the celestial body from which originates a meteorite or a class of meteorites.
Identification
It is easiest to correlate a meteorite with a parent body when the parent body still exists. This is the case for Lun ...
of the
Marconia family
An asteroid family is a population of asteroids that share similar proper orbital elements, such as semimajor axis, eccentricity (orbit), eccentricity, and orbital inclination. The members of the families are thought to be Collisional family, fra ...
(), a tiny
asteroid family
An asteroid family is a population of asteroids that share similar proper orbital elements, such as semimajor axis, eccentricity, and orbital inclination. The members of the families are thought to be fragments of past asteroid collisions. An ...
of less than 50 known members. It orbits the Sun in the