889 Erynia

889 Erynia is a highly elongated background asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt. It was discovered on 5 March 1918, by German astronomer Max Wolf at the Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory, and given the provisional designations and . The stony S-type asteroid (Sl) has a rotation period of 9.89 hours and measures approximately in diameter. It was named from Greek mythology, after the Erinyes, also known as Furies.

Orbit and classification

''Erynia'' 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 inner asteroid belt at a distance of 2.0–2.9  AU once every 3 years and 10 months (1,398 days; semi-major axis of 2.45 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.20 and an inclination of 8 ° with respect to the ecliptic. The asteroid was first observed as () at the Johannesburg Observatory on 7 August 1912. The body's observation arc begins at Heidelberg Observatory on 16 March 1918, or eleven nights after its official discovery observation.

Naming

This minor planet was named after one of the Erinyes from Greek mythology, also known as Furies in Roman mythology. The female deities of vengeance have snakes for hair, dog's heads, coal black bodies, bat's wings, and blood-shot eyes. They tortured their victims with brass-studded scourges and inflicted plagues. The was mentioned in ''The Names of the Minor Planets'' by Paul Herget in 1955 ().

Physical characteristics

In the Tholen-like taxonomy of the Small Solar System Objects Spectroscopic Survey (S3OS2), ''Erynia'' is a common stony S-type asteroid, while in the SMASS-like taxonomic variant of the survey, it is an Sl-subtype, which transitions from the S- to the uncommon L-type.

Rotation period and poles

In January 2002, a rotational lightcurve of ''Erynia'' was obtained from photometric observations by French astronomer Laurent Bernasconi. Lightcurve analysis gave a rotation period of hours with a high brightness variation of magnitude, indicative of a non-spherical, elongated shape (). A concurring period of hours and an amplitude 0.47 magnitude was obtained by astronomers at the Palomar Transient Factory in April 2010 (). In 2011, a modeled lightcurve using data from the Uppsala Asteroid Photometric Catalogue (UAPC) and other sources gave a sidereal period hours, as well as two spin axes at (187.0°, −60.0°) and (335.0°, −74.0°) in ecliptic coordinates (λ, β).

Diameter and albedo

According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and the Japanese Akari satellite, ''Erynia'' measures () and () kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of () and (), respectively. The ''Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link'' assumes a standard albedo for a stony asteroid of 0.20 and calculates a diameter of 18.75 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 11. The WISE team also published a mean-diameter of () with a corresponding albedo of ().

References

External links

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

Dictionary of Minor Planet Names
Google books


– ''Geneva Observatory'', Raoul Behrend

Discovery Circumstances: Numbered Minor Planets (1)-(5000)
– Minor Planet Center
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Erynia
000889
Discoveries by Max Wolf
Named minor planets
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