814 Tauris

814 Tauris ('' prov. designation:'' ''or'' ) is a dark and very large background asteroid, approximately in diameter, located the outer regions of the asteroid belt. It was discovered on 2 January 1916, by astronomer Russian Grigory Neujmin at the Simeiz Observatory on Crimea. The carbonaceous C-type asteroid has a longer-than average rotation period of 35.8 hours. It was named after the ancient name of the Crimean peninsula where the discovering observatory is located.

Orbit and classification

''Tauris'' is a non-family asteroid of the main belt's background population when applying the hierarchical clustering method to its proper orbital elements. It orbits the Sun in the outer main-belt at a distance of 2.2–4.1  AU once every 5 years and 7 months (2,048 days; semi-major axis of 3.16 AU). Its orbit has a notably high eccentricity of 0.31 and an inclination of 22 ° with respect to the ecliptic. This gives it a T_Jupiter of 3.0250, near the boundary of 3, which separates asteroids (above 3) from the Jupiter-family comets (below 3). ''Tauris'' was first observed as at Taunton Observatory on 12 May 1907. The body's observation arc begins at Heidelberg Observatory on 30 January 1916, or four weeks after its official discovery observation at Simeiz Observatory.

Naming

This minor planet was named after the ancient name of the Crimean peninsula, Tauris. Lutz Schmadel, the author of the ''Dictionary of Minor Planet Names'' also mentions a mountain with the same name on the southwest coast of Crimea. In addition, Baltic German astronomer Ludwig von Struve (1858–1920) also taught astronomy at the Tavrida University (Tauris University) in Simferopol, a large city on the Crimean peninsula (R. Bremer). The was also mentioned in '' The Names of the Minor Planets'' by Paul Herget in 1955 ().

Physical characteristics

In the Tholen classification as well in the Bus–Binzel SMASS classification, ''Tauris'' is a common, carbonaceous C-type asteroid, while in both the Tholen- and SMASS-like taxonomy of the Small Solar System Objects Spectroscopic Survey (S3OS2), it is an X-type asteroid.

Rotation period

In 1983, a rotational lightcurve of ''Tauris'', obtained from photometric observations with the ESO 0.5-metre telescope at La Silla, Chile, was by published by Belgian astronomer Henri Debehogne in collaboration with Italian astronomers Giovanni de Sanctis and Vincenzo Zappalà. Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of hours with a brightness variation of magnitude (). In May 2013, Michael S. Alkema at the Elephant Head Observatory in Arizona determined an identical period of hours with an amplitude of magnitude ().

Diameter and albedo

According to the surveys carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite IRAS, and the Japanese Akari satellite, ''Tauris'' measures (), () and () kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of (), () and (), respectively. The ''Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link'' adopts the results obtained by IRAS, that is, an albedo of 0.0470 and a diameter of 109.56 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 8.74. Alternative mean-diameter measurements published by the WISE team include (), (), () and () with corresponding albedos of (), (), () and ().

Several asteroid occultations of ''Tauris'' were observed between 1999 and 2015. These timed observations are taken when the asteroid passes in front of a distant star. The two best-rated observations made on 26 and 29 July 2015, gave a best-fit ellipse dimension of () and (), respectively. However, these two observations still received a relatively poor quality rating.

References

External links

Lightcurve Database Query
(LCDB), at ''www.minorplanet.info''

Dictionary of Minor Planet Names
Google books


– Minor Planet Center
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Discoveries by Grigory Neujmin
Named minor planets
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