253 Mathilde - Video Learning - WizScience.com
"
253 Mathilde" is a main-belt asteroid about 50 km in diameter that was discovered by
Johann Palisa in 1885. It has a relatively elliptical orbit that requires more than four years to circle the Sun. This asteroid has an unusually slow rate of rotation, requiring 17.4 days to complete a
360° revolution about its axis. It is a primitive
C-type asteroid, which means the surface has a high proportion of carbon; giving it a dark surface that reflects only 4% of the light that falls on it.
This asteroid was visited by the
NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft during June
1997, on its way to asteroid 433
Eros. During the flyby, the spacecraft imaged a hemisphere of the asteroid, revealing many large craters that have gouged out depressions in the surface. It was the first C-type asteroid to be explored and, until
21 Lutetia was visited in
2010, it was the largest asteroid to be visited by a spacecraft.
In
1880, Johann Palisa, the director of the
Austrian Naval Observatory, was offered a position as an assistant at the newly completed
Vienna Observatory. Although the job represented a demotion for Johann, it gave him access to the new 27 in refractor, the largest telescope in the world at that time. By this
point Johann had already discovered 27 asteroids, and he would employ the
Vienna 27 in and 12 in instruments to find an additional 94 asteroids before he retired.
Among his discoveries was the asteroid 253 Mathilde, found on
November 12, 1885. The initial orbital elements of the asteroid were then computed by
V. A. Lebeuf, another Austrian astronomer working at the observatory. The name of the asteroid was suggested by Lebeuf, after
Mathilde, the wife of
Moritz Leowy—who was the vice director of the
Paris Observatory.
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