3908 Nyx is an
Amor
Amor ("love" in Latin, Spanish and Portuguese) may refer to:
Music Albums
* ''Amor'' (Julio Iglesias album), 1982
* ''Amor'' (Andrea Bocelli album), 2006
Songs
* "Amor" (Los Auténticos Decadentes song), 2000
* "Amor" (Cristian Castro song), 199 ...
and
Mars-crosser asteroid. It was discovered by
Hans-Emil Schuster
Hans-Emil Schuster (born September 19, 1934 in Hamburg) is a German astronomer and a discoverer of minor planets and comets, who retired in October 1991. He worked at Hamburg Observatory at Bergedorf and European Southern Observatory (ESO), and ...
on August 6, 1980, and is named after
Nyx
Nyx (; , , "Night") is the Greek goddess and personification of night. A shadowy figure, Nyx stood at or near the beginning of creation and mothered other personified deities, such as Hypnos (Sleep) and Thanatos (Death), with Erebus (Darknes ...
, the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
goddess of the night, after which
Pluto
Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest k ...
's
moon
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width ...
Nix
Nix or NIX may refer to:
Places
* Nix, Alabama, an unincorporated community, United States
* Nix, Texas, a ghost town in southwestern Lampasas County, Texas, United States
* Nix (moon), a moon of Pluto
People
* Nix (surname), listing people ...
is also named. It is 1–2 km in diameter and is a
V-type asteroid, meaning that it may be a fragment of the asteroid
4 Vesta
Vesta ( minor-planet designation: 4 Vesta) is one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, with a mean diameter of . It was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers on 29 March 1807 and is named after Vesta, th ...
.
Observations
In 2000, radar observations conducted at the
Arecibo
Arecibo (; ) is a city and municipality on the northern coast of Puerto Rico, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, located north of Utuado and Ciales; east of Hatillo; and west of Barceloneta and Florida. It is about west of San Juan, the c ...
and
Goldstone observatories produced a model of Nyx's shape; the asteroid can best be described as spherical but with many protruding lumps.
Name
To avoid confusion with 3908 Nyx,
Pluto
Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest k ...
's moon
Nix
Nix or NIX may refer to:
Places
* Nix, Alabama, an unincorporated community, United States
* Nix, Texas, a ghost town in southwestern Lampasas County, Texas, United States
* Nix (moon), a moon of Pluto
People
* Nix (surname), listing people ...
was changed from the initial proposal of the
classical spelling
Nyx
Nyx (; , , "Night") is the Greek goddess and personification of night. A shadowy figure, Nyx stood at or near the beginning of creation and mothered other personified deities, such as Hypnos (Sleep) and Thanatos (Death), with Erebus (Darknes ...
, to Nix.
See also
*
3551 Verenia
*
4 Vesta
Vesta ( minor-planet designation: 4 Vesta) is one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, with a mean diameter of . It was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers on 29 March 1807 and is named after Vesta, th ...
*
4055 Magellan
*
HED meteorite
HED meteorites are a clan (subgroup) of achondrite meteorites. HED stands for " howardite–eucrite–diogenite".
These achondrites came from a differentiated parent body and experienced extensive igneous processing not much different from the mag ...
*
V-type asteroid
References
External links
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nyx
003908
Discoveries by Hans-Emil Schuster
Named minor planets
003908
003908
19800806
Nyx