249 Ilse is a

Main 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 ...

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 has an unusually slow rotation period, about 3.5

day A day is the time rotation period, period of a full Earth's rotation, rotation of the Earth with respect to the Sun. On average, this is 24 hours (86,400 seconds). As a day passes at a given location it experiences morning, afternoon, evening, ...

s. It was discovered by

C. H. F. Peters Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters (September 19, 1813 – July 18, 1890) was a German–American astronomer and professor at Hamilton College, New York, and a pioneer in the study and visual discovery of asteroids. His name is often given as . ...

on August 16, 1885, in

Clinton, New York Clinton, New York may refer to: *Clinton County, New York *Clinton, Clinton County, New York *Clinton, Dutchess County, New York *Clinton, Oneida County, New York * Clinton, Manhattan, or Hell's Kitchen, a neighborhood in New York City *East Greenb ...

and was named after

Ilse Ilse is a Germanic feminine given name. It is technically a German diminutive of Elisabeth, functioning as a given name in its own right chiefly in Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, South Africa and all of the Scandinavia ...

, a legendary

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

princess. Due to the long rotation period, a possible asteroidal

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

of Ilse was proposed by R. P. Binzel in 1987 however no evidence of this has been found.

References

External links

The Asteroid Orbital Elements Database

Asteroid Lightcurve Data File
* * Background asteroids

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