(697402) Ao, provisional designation , is an outer

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 was discovered on 23 January 2017, by the citizen science project Come On! Impacting ASteroids (COIAS) using archival data from the

Subaru Telescope is the telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, located at the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii. It is named after the open star cluster known in English as the Pleiades. It had the largest monolithic primary mirror in the ...

, which was first reported to the

Minor Planet Center The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the official body for observing and reporting on minor planets under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Founded in 1947, it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Funct ...

in February 2024.

Orbit

Ao is an Outer

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 in a heliocentric orbit with a

semi-major axis In geometry, the major axis of an ellipse is its longest diameter: a line segment that runs through the center and both foci, with ends at the two most widely separated points of the perimeter. The semi-major axis (major semiaxis) is the longe ...

of about 3.2 AU in a relatively circular orbit with an

eccentricity Eccentricity or eccentric may refer to: * Eccentricity (behavior), odd behavior on the part of a person, as opposed to being "normal" Mathematics, science and technology Mathematics * Off-Centre (geometry), center, in geometry * Eccentricity (g ...

of 0.09 and an

inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object. For a satellite orbiting the Eart ...

of about 9 degrees. It orbits the Sun every 5.8 years.

Discovery and naming

The first observation of Ao was on 25 March 2006 by Mt. Lemmon Survey. The asteroid was also observed and reported in later years. It was only in late 2016 and 2017 that it was observed for multiple nights in a single opposition, which is how the

determines the discovery opposition. These observations made using the

were not reported until February 2024, through the web-based citizen science project Come On! Impacting ASteroids (COIAS). Between 2017 and 2024, other observations were also made, none of which provided multiple-night observations in a single opposition. Multiple astrometric measurement reports through the COIAS project belonging to observations dated 2017 therefore became the earliest reports of multiple-night observations of the asteroid within a single opposition, determining the discovery observations. The asteroid was located in these images by using a digital blinking and moving object detection method. After the astrometric measurements belonging to 2017 observations were identified to belong to the same object, a provisional designation was assigned to the object. After its orbital uncertainty parameter dropped to 0, the asteroid was numbered (697402). Discovery credit was assigned to Subaru Telescope and later to the citizen science project COIAS. The COIAS development team and the citizen scientists who took part in the astrometric measurements of (697402) discussed the name. They decided to name the asteroid after the fictional character Ao Manaka, who appears as a main character in the

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

and

anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...

Asteroid in Love is a Japanese Yonkoma, four-panel manga series by Quro, serialized in Houbunsha's seinen manga, ''seinen'' manga magazine ''Manga Time Kirara Carat'' from January 2017 to June 2024. It has been collected in six ''tankōbon'' volumes. An anim ...

'' created by author Quro. This decision is explained in the naming citation as follows:

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:697402 Ao Main-belt asteroids 20170123 Discoveries by COIAS