27 Euterpe is a stony

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 parent body of the Euterpe family, located in the inner

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 100 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered by English astronomer John Russell Hind at George Bishop's Observatory in London on 8 November 1853. The asteroid was named after

Euterpe Euterpe (; , from + ) was one of the Muses in Greek mythology, presiding over music. In late Classical times, she was named muse of lyric poetry. She has been called "Giver of delight" by ancient poets. Mythology Euterpe was born as one of t ...

, the

Muse In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, the Muses (, ) were the Artistic inspiration, inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric p ...

of music in

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

. ''Euterpe'' is one of the brightest asteroids in the night sky. It had an

apparent magnitude Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the Irradiance, brightness of a star, astronomical object or other celestial objects like artificial satellites. Its value depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance, and any extinction (astronomy), ...

of 8.5 during a perihelic opposition on 25 December 2015 when the asteroid was about 1 AU from Earth. At the end of November 2022 it passed about 1.5 degrees from

Uranus Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is a gaseous cyan-coloured ice giant. Most of the planet is made of water, ammonia, and methane in a Supercritical fluid, supercritical phase of matter, which astronomy calls "ice" or Volatile ( ...

while in the constellation of Aries. Based on the S-type spectra the composition appears stony. It has a cross-section size of around 100–120 km. 27 Euterpe is orbiting the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

with a period of 3.59 years and is spinning on its axis once every 10.4 hours. It is the parent body of the Euterpe family (), a stony inner-belt asteroid family of nearly 400 known members. ''Euterpe'' has been studied by

radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...

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:Euterpe 000027 Discoveries by John Russell Hind Named minor planets 000027 000027 18531108