148 Gallia is an

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 ...

from the central 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 ...

, approximately in diameter. It was discovered on 7 August 1875, by the French brothers Paul Henry and Prosper Henry at the Paris, but the credit for this discovery was given to Prosper. It was named after the Latin name for the country of France,

Gaul Gaul () was a region of Western Europe first clearly described by the Roman people, Romans, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Northern Italy. It covered an area of . Ac ...

. Based upon its spectrum, it is an unusual G-type asteroid (GU) and a stony S-type asteroid in the Tholen and SMASS classification, respectively. Photometric observations of this asteroid at the European Southern Observatory in 1977–78 gave a

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 ...

with a period of and a brightness variation of 0.32 in magnitude. A 2007 study at the Palmer Divide Observatory in Colorado, United States, yielded a period of 20.666 ± 0.002 hours with a magnitude variation of 0.21. This object is the namesake of the Gallia family (), a small

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

of nearly 200 known stony asteroids that share similar spectral properties and

orbital elements Orbital elements are the parameters required to uniquely identify a specific orbit. In celestial mechanics these elements are considered in two-body systems using a Kepler orbit. There are many different ways to mathematically describe the same o ...

. Hence they may have arisen from the same collisional event. All members have a relatively high orbital inclination.

Notes

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:Gallia 000148 Discoveries by Paul Henry and Prosper Henry Named minor planets 000148 000148 000148 18750807