372 Palma is one of the largest
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 ...
s. It is a
B-type asteroid
B-type asteroids are a relatively uncommon type of carbonaceous asteroid, falling into the wider C-type asteroid#C-group asteroids, C-group; the 'B' indicates these objects are spectrally blue. In the asteroid population, B-class objects can be f ...
.
It was discovered by
Auguste Charlois
Auguste Honoré Charlois (; November 26, 1864 – March 26, 1910) was a French astronomer who discovered 99 asteroids while working at the Nice Observatory in southeastern France.
Asteroid discovery
His first discovery was the asteroid 267 Tirz ...
on August 19, 1893, in
Nice
Nice ( ; ) is a city in and the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of nearly one million[Majorca
Mallorca, or Majorca, is the largest of the Balearic Islands, which are part of Spain, and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, seventh largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.
The capital of the island, Palma, Majorca, Palma, i ...]
, an island in the Balearics (
Spain
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
), which is located south of France. It is one of seven of Charlois's discoveries that were expressly named by the Astromomisches Rechen-Institut (Astronomical Calculation Institute).
Occultations
Since 2000, it has been observed 14 times in an
asteroid occultation
An occultation is an event that occurs when one object is hidden from the observer by another object that passes between them. The term is often used in astronomy, but can also refer to any situation in which an object in the foreground blocks f ...
event, a number of which produced multiple
chords
Chord or chords may refer to:
Art and music
* Chord (music), an aggregate of musical pitches sounded simultaneously
** Guitar chord, a chord played on a guitar, which has a particular tuning
* The Chords (British band), 1970s British mod ...
revealing the asteroid's size and shape. On September 13, 2018, it was revealed to be 120 miles long (193 kilometers long). It is in a fixed orbit around the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
See also
*
List of exceptional asteroids
The following is a collection of lists of asteroids of the Solar System that are exceptional in some way, such as their size or orbit. For the purposes of this article, "asteroid" refers to minor planets out to the orbit of Neptune, and includes ...
References
External links
Asteroid 372 Palma / Andromeda Galaxy Transit (19 Oct 2011)
*
*
Background asteroids
Palma
Palma
BFC-type asteroids (Tholen)
B-type asteroids (SMASS)
18930819
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