760 Massinga ('' prov. designation:'' ''or'' ) is a large

background asteroid An asteroid family is a population of asteroids that share similar proper orbital elements, such as semimajor axis, eccentricity, and orbital inclination. The members of the families are thought to be fragments of past asteroid collisions. A ...

from the outer regions of the

asteroid belt The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called ...

, approximately in diameter. It was discovered by German astronomer

Franz Kaiser Franz Heinrich Kaiser (25 April 1891 – 13 March 1962) was a German astronomer. He worked at the Heidelberg-Königstuhl Observatory from 1911 to 1914 while working on his Ph.D. there, which he obtained in 1915. During this time, Heidelberg was ...

at the

Heidelberg Observatory Heidelberg (; Palatine German: ') is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914, of which roughly a quarter consisted of students. ...

on 28 August 1913. The stony

S-type asteroid S-type asteroids are asteroids with a spectral type that is indicative of a siliceous (i.e. stony) mineralogical composition, hence the name. They have relatively high density. Approximately 17% of asteroids are of this type, making it the secon ...

has a

rotation period The rotation period of a celestial object (e.g., star, gas giant, planet, moon, asteroid) may refer to its sidereal rotation period, i.e. the time that the object takes to complete a single revolution around its axis of rotation relative to the ...

of 10.7 hours and is somewhat elongated in shape. It was named in memory of Adam Massinger (1888–1914), a German astronomer at Heidelberg who was killed in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

Orbit and classification

''Massinga'' is a non-

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

asteroid of the main belt's background population when applying the

hierarchical clustering method An asteroid family is a population of asteroids that share similar proper orbital elements, such as semimajor axis, eccentricity, and orbital inclination. The members of the families are thought to be fragments of past asteroid collisions. An a ...

to its

proper orbital elements __NOTOC__ The proper orbital elements or proper elements of an orbit are constants of motion of an object in space that remain practically unchanged over an astronomically long timescale. The term is usually used to describe the three quantiti ...

. It orbits the Sun in the

outer {{Short pages monitor